I want you cool and regal, earthy and impertinent, spoiling for a fight and abashed at your own temper. I want you flushed with exertion and rosy with sleep. I want you teasing and provocative, somber and thoughtful. I want every emotion, every mood, every year in a lifetime to come. I want you beside me, to encourage and argue with me, to help me and let me help you. I want to be your champion and lover, your mentor and student.

Conscience is like a pet: If you spoil it by too much attention it'll start yipping at the most inopportune times.

No one ever fell in love gracefully.

I am no good without you, Ginesse,” he said. “I spent a lifetime alone, but I never understood loneliness until I was away from you. I never understood happiness until I saw you again.

The lower your decolletage, the less the need for conversation.

She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn't come. She was running again, but she wasn't escaping. She'd been chased to ground a long, long time ago.

She'd stood by that creed. No softness, because the world wasn't soft; lots of laughter, because if you were in on the joke, the joke couldn't be on you; And no wanting what you couldn't take, because the world never gave. Or so she'd thought.