Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?

I just finished Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad," which I think is a work of genius.

She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.

Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot. 'I just wanted to wake you up', he said. Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over.

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.