I don't have the heart to tell him that's the wrong way to think about the world. There will always be more questions Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

I didn't want to see her. I was desperate to see her. I wanted to hold it together. I wanted to melt down right at her feet and scream, Look what you've done to me.

I'd pick you, I say. Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dud and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we're gonna want to do when we're old. We've been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I'd pick you.

It’s okay,” I tell her.“It is okay to be happy

Breath and heat and contact and shirts off and skin on skin and smiles and murmurs and the enormity revealing itself in the tiniest of gestures, the most delicate sensations.

I want to say more, but don't know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no room in the air.

Now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon as not-quite-day, becomes not-quite-night

What's the point of all this magic, if no one really knows how to use it? But I guess the same could be said about life. Which is another form of magic, only less showy.

It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.

I wake up feverish, sore, uncomfortable.Is it sickness or is it heartbreak?I can't tell.The thermometer says I'm normal, but I'm clearly not.

People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don't acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are the memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.

The kiss I like the most is one of the slow ones. It's as much breath as touch, as much no as yes. You lean in from the side, and I have to turn a little to make it happen.

What I'm trying to say is that I spent the last four months learning to be alone, avoiding the world, hating pretty much anyone who so much as blinked at me." But when I am with you, I don't want to be that person anymore.

You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope.

I think they would like the songs betterif I left out the names, or changedthe pronouns.

The Beatles.”“What about The Beatles?”“They nailed it.”“Nailed what?”“Everything.”“What do you mean?”Dev takes his arm and puts it right against mine, skin to skin, sweat on sweat, touch on touch. Then he glides his hand into mine and intertwines our fingers.“This,” he says. “This is why The Beatles got it.”“I’m afraid I’m not following…”“Other bands, it’s about sex. Or pain. Or some fantasy. But The Beatles, they knew what they were doing.You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?”“What?”‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can’t hide. Every single successful love song of the past fifty years can be traced back to ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.