my god, my god, whose performance am i watching? how many people am i? who am i? what is this space between myself and myself?

if you love me, henry, you don’t love me in a way i understand.

didn't you wake up feeling that you had no future? didn't you walk around drained of all meaning, without the right to even the slightest danger? didn't you have to promise, a hundred times, not to die?

ronan had spent weeks with two adams: one certain he had earned his place at an ivy and one certain the school would soon discover how worthless he truly was. ronan endured it with as much grace as he could manage. who else did adam have to crow to, after all?

for a while it was love, wasn't it? for me it was love.

if they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided with one.

someone has to leave first. this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story.

all time ever does is pass and all i ever do is remember.

and if i talk to you in fables and parables it's because it's more gentle for you that way; and horror really can't be talked about because it's alive, because it's mute and goes on growing: memory-wounding pain drips by day drips in sleep.

i loved my friend. he went away from me. there is nothing more to say.

when i am sixteen, my father calls me on the phone to, inevitably, weep. he says, “living in this country, i have learned not to hope for things. only you are my hope. only you.”

he just frowned more deeply than he had during the entire exchange, his mouth all crumpled with consternation. “what's the face for?” “i want it too much,” adam said.

and she could not help thinking, how many times have you played this scene, old man? it's new and raw for me, but not for you, no.

it was a mistake to keep this single knife in my heart so long, but it is my knife, and my heart, too,

it's one thing to go looking for blood and another entirely to be delivered into the merciless hands of the hunters, stripped and shorn of fight. he looks the way saints are portrayed in the final moment of their martyrdom, blood like holy oil anointing his lips, his throat.

there is still one difference left between us. you have a tenderness grown weary and i have a weariness grown tender.

ronan had spent weeks with two adams: one certain he had earned his place at an ivy and one certain the school would soon discover how worthless he truly was. ronan endured it with as much grace as he could manage. who else did adam have to crow to, after all?

i often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.

i was always ashamed to take. so i gave. it was not a virtue. it was a disguise.

your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with others' pain; and insofar as you can do that, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around; insofar as i can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps i can help you suffer less.