“How could I possibly gone this long without the touch of another human being? I've been living my life like a zombie”

“I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.”

“I had wondered a million times how I could possibly go on living when my heart was gone? How was it possible that it still beat in my chest when it felt so empty?”

“Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.”

“You in my life, me livin' in hell, feels like I've been touched by an angel.”

“I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life.”