Any love that is love is right.

My mother said, "kiss him, darling, it's easy so natural" and I thought to myself, not with lips of stone, dear mother, not with lips of stone

Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to.

Maybe her own tears were the poison that made her grow.

You turned your head to look at me. Your eyes looked so big in your face, so mysterious — wide and flickering like a butterfly-wing mask. When you saw me the wails turned to sobs, and then just quieter heaves of your body. I held out my finger through the bars. Then you reached out and curled your fingers around mine, so tight. I knew you recognized me. That was the first time I knew I had a heart inside my body.

Pain didn't ever really stop, he thought; it just changed forms.

If you were a mermaid, you said, If you were a mermaid, I was the sea.