Why is it that only in the very beginnings of a relationship are you aware of the heat coming from inside a person, of the number of inches you would have to move for your shoulders to brush as if it were an accident?

The reason I am still sitting at Josef's kitchen table is the same reason traffic slows after a car wreck- you want to see the damage; you can't let yourself pass without that mental snapshot. We are drawn to horror even as we recoil from it.

As anyone who's ever contracted it knows, lies are an infectious disease. They slip under the almond slivers of your fingernails and into your bloodstream.

There are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give.

Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup

The brain of a person in love will show activity in the amygdala, which is associated with gut feelings, and in the nucleus accumbens, an area associated with rewarding stimuli that tends to be active in drug abusers. Or, to recap: the brain of a person in love doesn't look like the brain of someone overcome by deep emotion. It looks like the brain of a person who's been snorting coke.

You came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you'd been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you. [...] I said that next time, you had to take me with you." "Was there a next time?" "Well, you tell me, you don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?