"A great giftwe can giveto ourselvesis a willingnessto love everyone,no matter what.This frees us completely from the toxicjustificationswe use to hate."

"He slipped his tongue between her lips and thrust it wantonly inside her mouth over and over, echoing the enticing move of his hips against hers. She clutched him closer, reveling in the feel of him, and the fact that she'd made him moan for her, whisper her name over and over, beg her without words for more. To kiss him more. To touch him more."

"Some ghost of myself still lived back in the days when we'd shared a bed and talked of the future. But that love we'd had and those selves we'd been were gone, placed in a box like old photographs and letters you'd never read again."

"Look at this existence. This pathetic, fallible, wonderful body,” you can say rhetorically, sarcastically, or earnestly and still achieve death. Look at me falling in love with fallible bodies. Look at me performing emotional labor."