He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.

The priests and the scientists are right about one thing: At our heart, at our base, we are no better than animals.

But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all. But maybe happiness isn’t in the choosing. Maybe it’s in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

Amor deliria nervosa isn't a disease of love. It's a disease of selfishness.

willing me to understand: that people should be sacrificed to causes, that beauty can be built on the backs of the dead.

"And I love you too." His fingers skate the edge of my jaw, dance briefly over my lips. "You should know that. You have to know that."