This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors.

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

Time and space recede and blast away like a universe expanding forever outward, and leaving only darkness and the two of us on its periphery, darkness and breathing and touch.

My heart is drumming in my chest so hard it aches, but it's the good kind of ache, like the feeling you get on the first real day of autumn, when the air is crisp and the leaves are all flaring at the edges and the wind smells just vaguely of smoke - like the end and the beginning of something all at once.

I keep having the urge to cross my hands over my chest, to cover up my breasts, to hide. I'm suddenly aware of how pale I look in the sunshine, and how many moles I have spotting up and down my chest, and I just know he's looking at me thinking i'm wrong or deformed. But the he breathes, 'Beautiful' and when his eyes meet mine I know that he really, truly means it.

Love is the only thing in the world worth having. You must never loose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

Amazing how hope lives. Without air or water, with hardly anything at all to nurture it.