Over the past week, I’ve accepted that I will never love Julian as much as I loved Alex. But now that idea is overwhelming, like a wall between us. I will never love Julian like I love Alex.

Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?

It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

Fred is officially the mayor of Portland now.

We're on the other side of the fence now, Lena,' she says, tiredly, as she passes. "Don't you get it? You can't tell me what to feel.

....love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake.

We’ll go.” Her voice is surprisingly deep and forceful. Set in her sunken, shipwreck face, her eyes burn like two smoldering coals. “We’ll fight.