There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

I won't ever leave you, even though you're always leaving me.

I look at him, look at the book, remember, this book, this moment, the first book I ever loved

Why is love intensified by absence?

I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment.

Henry loves my hair almost as though it is a creature unto itself, as though it has a soul to call its own, as though it could love him back.