Bet you never eat, he says. Bet you drink up the oxygen like it's butter. Bet you can go for days on nothing but thoughts.

Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.

Lovers are weapons, but love is a wound.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

I never wanted to live forever," she says. "I just wanted enough time.

I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.

I don't know if it was love or an illusion. I don't know if there's ever a way to be certain.