....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.

And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.

I’ve never really had a party before.” “Why did you have one now?” I say, just to keep him talking. He gives a half laugh. “I thought if I had a party, you would come.

Some things are better left buried and forgotten.

Human beings, in their natural state, are unpredictable, erratic, and unhappy. It is only once their animal instincts are controlled that they can be responsible, dependable, and content.

When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color […]—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms. I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay. And until then: I run.

Still, the vivid green of the grass-where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt-seems out of place. This seems like a place where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.