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After loss, love is never the same. That is not to say you won’t love another, maybe even more than ever before. But as you love them, you will mourn them. You’ll try not to, of course. Try to say, “You never know.” But you do. You know. And every inch gained in flight is an inch added to the fall.

Did humans hug in their caves? [...] Who was the first person to seek comfort in another? Did it work? And if not, who was brave enough to try again?

Does it count as staying if leaving is always on the mind? How much lying does a marriage need to survive?

You know that worried feeling?" Rose responded straight into Lily's ear. Not a whisper, but not loud enough for anyone else. "That feeling in your gut all the time, no matter the quality or intention of your company, like your safety is a gift from the men around you, not a right?" Page 248

What makes bitter things sweet? Hunger. —ALCUIN, ADVISOR TO CHARLEMAGNE

Because the world had told her that if she sacrificed as much as she could - if she kept herself small and quiet, swallowed back her questions and angers and fears - she would eventually be light enough for someone else to carry.

And she knew, the way a tree that strains at a sharper and sharper angles knows, that a thing can grow even under terrible circumstances, but that doesn't mean it should.

Up until that moment with Rose all those years ago, Lily had spent her young life assuming that her fear was a defect. She thought if she could just be wanted right, by the right man, that she herself would be righted, and that the fear would go away. But even the best man comes with the strength and stature to remind a woman that every time he doesn't hurt her is a favor.

The truth was this: in Silas’s brief but only time on this earth, happiness had been a beautiful lie. An intended kindness, like Santa Claus or God, just convincing enough to make him feel ashamed of his skepticism, and double down. But then he kissed Sarah Kelly for the first time, and he knew that his happiness was only a fraction of the real deal. The appetizers at a buffet. A cut drug. But happiness can be cruel. If they hadn’t gone for that first walk, if he hadn’t felt her tongue in his mouth as they pressed against that tree in the dark, Silas would’ve thought—rather satisfied—that the happiness he had known thus far was as much happiness as any one person could know. He would’ve felt lucky for his crumbs, mistaking them for meals. Because the truth was he didn’t know he was starving until he tasted her. Until then, he believed himself fed.

Là où je veux en venir, c'est que même avec tout ce que je sais, même avec tout ce que j'ai accompli, je me retrouve encore à devoir battre des cils en me tortillant les cheveux parce que j'ai besoin de l'aide d'un putain de débile qui ne pense qu'avec sa bite. On aurait pu croire que dans l'au-delà, on en aurait fini avec toutes ces conneries sexistes. Mais manifestement, non. Même en enfer, toutes les compétences du monde ne valent pas une paire de seins.

Before that she believed her body's only power was in the currency its shape gave her, which made her worth something to the strong. It wasn't until she brought her children into the world through nothing but her body's force that she realized she could be strong herself. Page 171

To breathe is miraculous.

Love is one of these things humans experience, twist to fit their cage of mortality, and then claim to have invented. I'm not blaming you, far from it. Love was made to be coveted, and humans are nothing if not convinced of their right to take.

As far as I can tell from my observations, growing up seems to involve a lot of false starts, a lot of broken promises. The realization of the world as something neither for nor against you, but rather uninterested in you entirely. No matter how special you are, how many gold stars you receive, the world itself is incapable of loving you. When you're a kid, you don't care. You love what you love: your parents, your neighbor's angry cat, your favorite TV characters and their plastic replicas on your shelf, regardless of what you get in return. But growing up seems to be a lesson in loving only those who will love you back, and forsaking the rest.

Love—as it is in the wild, no fingerprints on the glass—knows nothing of time. If you were lucky enough for your first fall to be in love and not loss, you might get what I'm talking about. The pure stuff, like flying before you look down. Like learning that the body you thought you had to fill out all by yourself actually came with an extension; that neither worked alone, but together—bam, all of the lights come on. That's how love is supposed to be. When you add in time, however, it does what time always does. Brings everything, eventually, inevitably, to its end. After loss, love is never the same. That is not to say you won't love another, maybe even more than ever before. But as you love them, you will mourn them. You'll try not to, of course. Try to say, "You'll never know." But you do. You know. And every inch gained in flight is an inch added to the fall. That's why, when you're flat-backed on the belt, we don't cut the love out. Every time you manage to think about that which you love—remember a face or a smell—you will be bird-dogged, instantly, by the bone saw of reality. Not how it will end, but how it always has. Love tortures you more than we ever could.

Are you God?” he whispered. “I’m here to save you.” It wasn’t a lie. I was saving him from something.

The presumption that the dead are happy just to listen was a selfish, desperate side effect of loss.

If you go too long without seeing parts of yourself in others, you start to think you’re made wrong.

The air on Earth is so delicious. I can’t understand why you people insist on ruining it. It’s like you’ve been given the best feast in the world, and you let nine billion people use the table as a toilet. But then you freak out if your neighbor’s dog poops on your lawn.

She felt like a trapdoor had opened and all of her insides had spilled out, leaving her tripping over her intestines as she climbed the stairs, apologizing for their stains.

It wasn't that she held my heart, something taken from me. It's that my heart was nothing if not for the container of her hand.

You already have a lot of ideas about Hell. It’s amazing what Dante and thousands of years of folklore can do to a place’s reputation. I mean, I’m not going to lie to you: it is Hell. It’s not fantastic. But let’s see if this is relatable: You’re late to your aunt’s boyfriend’s birthday brunch because your alarm was on mute even though you know you turned it up the night before. You barrel onto the subway, managing to squeeze yourself between the woman blasting a Techno for the Lonely playlist and the man who farts every time he sneezes, and, just when the lights of the station are out of view, the train lurches to a stop with a death rattle and goes dark. The woman elbows you in the gut as she hits Replay, and the man’s snot tickles as it spays your cheek, and you think about how you don’t even like your aunt’s boyfriend or even your aunt and you hate brunch, and what do you see? I’ll tell you; I’ve heard it a million times. You say, ‘This is Hell’. Well, you're right. That's Hell. At least the top floors of it.

Maybe I didn't turn out to be a good person in Hell.

It was the greatest irony of her life: how much she hated her body and how much she lived for the attention it garnered.

Love is all-powerful, until you learn firsthand what happens when a vegetable peeler meets the far-back surface of your tongue.

And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n. —JOHN MILTON

She was enraged with herself. But by then, she was gone, too, the death certificate saying ovarian cancer but Silas knowing it was the rage that killed her: she grew those tumors like teeth to eat herself alive.

He stood back up, extending his leg a few times and listening for the pop. He had noticed his bones more lately, the way they sizzled and snagged on one another. He wasn't an old man yet, not nearly. But his body had more to say than it ever had before, and he didn't quite know how to listen.