Someday when you're twenty, maybe, I'll see you again. You'll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I'll see you and I'll pray you want me still.

Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what precious gifts they would ever get.

He just wanted to look at her and know her life was marching along under the same arch of time and space as he is.

Everything good requires sacrifices.

What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing.

She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciate it even though she couldn’t have it. Why did she always feel she had to do something in the face of beauty?