Everything mortal wears a chain with its death on the other end. None of you should escape that you are on earth only a very short time, but you all think you have figured out how to be gods. Tell me the story of the man who sees his death and loves it as much as it loves him.

They may have been rightly overbearing in her formative years, but they also loved Roselyn enough to trust she needed dreams more than realities.

I miss more loving someone so deeply that I can't imagine a forever without her kisses.

Loving her has become a part of my religion, a gentle mantra with every beating of my heart. I cannot imagine its Ragnarok without wilting.

People who believe their god loves them unconditionally are less able to be controlled through divine terrorism.

One’s first love is the most transformative and least replicable experience. I could love someone else, but it would be its own unfathomable emotion. It would not be this precious, first, spring love. If I cannot love her fully, it will be a love that corrodes within me.

Love could not save her from the bargains others had made.

It is said—not exclusively by people with eating disorders—that food is a drug. Who doesn't feel better when given chocolate at the end of a miserable day? To your brain, real chocolate mimics love. (For all its miracle, the brain subsists on illusions as much as it does much of the fat you eat. Chocolate supplies both.)

The city has a way of tricking people into honesty, or honest sounding lies. It is the noise, the crowds, squeezing things from deep inside you that you assumed would be hidden beneath the honk of a cab. You breathe in the vapor rising from manholes and the unceasing petrichor and cough out something as foolish as “I love you” to someone you don’t yet.