We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.

That’s what made it so frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys no laws other than its own.

With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.

The Wilds aren't safe anymore.

I said, I prefer the ocean when it's gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.

And now I know why they invented words for love, why they had to: It's the only thing that can come close to describing what I feel in that moment, the baffling mixture of pain and pleasure and fear and joy, all running sharply through me at once.

The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped.