It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

There's something ugly about the flawless.

What's your name?" "Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?" "Wanted." "By all the girls or just the law?

Everyone sees different things.