"The clock chimed five. It sounded almost celebratory as they stood there, hands clasped between them like the meeting of continents. Colton’s mouth was soft and warm, sunlight on silk. Danny was swallowing light. It dived down inside of him until he imagined it bursting out of every pore."

"Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that."

"Kintsugi is a pottery technique. When something breaks, like a vase, they glue it back together with melted gold. Instead of making the cracks invisible, they make them beautiful. To celebrate the history of the object. What it's been through. And I was just... Thinking of us like that. My heart full of gold veins, instead of cracks."

"You view love and especially women...As something hostile, something against which you defend yourself, although in vain, something whose power over you, however, you feel as a sweet torment, a prickling cruelty: this is truly a modern attitude."