Men. Young men. Legal age, mind you. But young nonetheless. And it’s not what you think. When we meet, we make … magic.

With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.

A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself.

What worth was a man who could not be haunted?

Why'd you want to sing about sad things?" Candy had asked him. "Because any fool can be happy," he'd said to her. "It takes a man with real heart" —he'd made a fist and laid it against his chest— "to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.

Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads.