Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.

How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust--and also to make you feel so whole?

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

I'd rather die on my own terms than live on theirs. I'd rather die loving Alex than live without him.

My first kiss. A new kind of kiss, like the new kind of music still playing, softly, in the distance - wild and arrhythmic, desperate. Passionate.

What does it feel like to be infected?" "I-- I can't describe it." I force the words out. Can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe. His skin smells like smoke from a wood fire, like soap, like heaven. I imagine tasting his skin; I imagine biting his lips. "I want to know." His words are a whisper, barely audible. "I want to know with you.

The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain. And then, in smaller letters: Forgive me.