For a split second, he had looked almost like my Alex again.

Everywhere he touches is fire. My whole body is burning up, the two of us becoming twin points of the same bright white flame.

You don't reach points in life at which everything is sorted out for us. I believe in endings that should suggest our stories always continue.

Of all the systems of the body - neurological, cognitive, special, sensory - the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

I hate both of my parents right now: for sitting quietly in our house, while out in the darkness my heart was beating away all of the seconds of my life, ticking them off one by one until my time was up; for letting the thread between us stretch so far and so thin that the moment it was severed for good they didn't even feel it.

It's an incredible thing, how you can feel so taken care of by someone and yet feel, also, like you would die or do anything just for the chance to protect him back.