There was love expressed in the places you usually forget to look.

You are not going to die, I know I said I'd let you, but I can't.

It was wrong. But it was worth it.

Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.

I'm writing this down, because it is going to be hard for me to say it. Because this is probably our last time just us. See, I can write that down, but I don't think I can say it. I'm not doing this to say goodbye, though I know that has to be part of it. I'm doing it to thank you for all we have had and done and been for one another, to say I love you for making this life of mine what it is. Leaving you is the hardest thing I have to do. But the thing is, the best parts of me are in you, all three of you. You are who I am, and what I cherish in myself stays on in you.

Why does he have to be my boyfriend? Are you inferior if you don't have a boyfriend? Why does everybody have to be in love with somebody?

The most haunting thing was not that he didn't love her anymore. She could have accepted that eventually. The most haunting thing was that he did. He loved her from afar. He loved her in a way that was preserved in time, that couldn't be sullied. And she tended it in her careful, curatorial way.