Everything comes to nothing in the end, I suppose. Or at least, nothing happens exactly the way we imagine it.

You're beautiful, but you're somewhere else. That's okay. I can handle that. But we won't continue as friends, not just now. I like you as a lover, not a friend.

The very concept of solid ground is a myth. The galaxy itself is adrift.

Comfort is beauty muted by heroin. Sadness is beauty drained by lack of it.

Imperceptibly, more time passes when I'm not remembering our every moment together, not recreating our every conversation, re-imagining our love-making. It is immeasurably sad.

In the presence of their love I sensed my lonliness, and I understood for a moment, clearly, that deep and basic human desire for companionship at depth.

For the Tintin books were my emotional universe. To read them felt quite simply like being loved: in advance and by an entire world of pure possibility, my future. But to write to the author was to reach out for the lover. Even today, the power of reading one remains visceral: each book acts as a form of transportation, not just to the emotional landscape of this first literary love affair but to very specific memories.