I like marriage. The idea.

Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? The Lion or the Mouse? Poppy or the Snake?

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.

The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.

He wants to put his story next to hers.

Evil is just sort of ultimately boring. The good thing is just complicated. It's more provocative to me and more stimulating to me.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.