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.

If Cassie was invalidated because she caught the disease, or because Fred suspected her of it, I can only imagine what he will do to me and to my family if he discovers that the cure did not work perfectly.

If you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning.

Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.

A string of bright white buildinh, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean.

Love, the deadliest of all things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't. But that isn't it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.

It's a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It's a miracle I'm even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.