Fear and bigotry don’t need explaining. They simply are, like traffic jams and taxes.

Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.

Uh - do you want to do it outside? "Frequently. Oh, you meant the wedding. That, too.

I see you. I will be careful with the places that hurt.

What?" She drew herself up, stern as a cat presented with the wrong food for dinner.

We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.

Marriage and especially the ceremony which announces it, the wedding... That is how we say to the world, 'These two are now a family, and with this joining our families are joined, too. And you had damned well better respect that.