I tried to convey to the boy how people's lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

Language is like looking at a map of somewhere. Love is living there and surviving on the land.

Royal Young's writing is that rare blend of irony and beauty.

I wanted to explain that trusting is harder than being trusted.

But say you do find the right people - how do you love them without smothering them?...How do you not suffocate them with all the love you've built up in their absence?

We touched with a softness that pushed through the skin into memory, like arms plunged into a river - we could feel the weight of each other's stones.

Love requires imagination more than experience.