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.

I didn’t know who she was, but I had this fire inside me for someone I knew existed.

I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.

When I was in my early twenties, I fell in love at least 20 times a day. You have to be with someone where you think: if the world was full of people like you, I could not be monogamous. As you get older, you get to know yourself a little more. The older you get, the more you realize what you need. And you also realize how your choice in relationships is influenced by how you grew up. Now I feel like I've explored the dynamic of how I grew up, and I'm free to find someone who's really going to be a wonderful companion.

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

I wonder if things can happen too early or too late or if everything happens at exactly the right time. If so, how sad and beautiful.

If there is such a thing as marriage, it takes place long before the ceremony; in a car on the way to the airport; or as a gray bedrooms fills with dawn, one lover watching the other; or as two strangers stand together in the rain with no bus in sight, arms weighed down with shopping bags. You don't know then. But later you realize - that was the moment.