O rose, who dares to name thee?_x000D_ _x000D_ No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,_x000D_ _x000D_ But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,_x000D_ _x000D_ Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.

Since you walked out on me I'm getting lovelier by the hour. I glow like a corpse in the dark. No one sees how round and sharp my eyes have grown how my carcass looks like a glass urn, how I hold up things in the rags of my hands, the way I can stand through crippled by lust. No, there's just your cruelty circling my head like a bright rotting halo.

Never in his life had Edward been cradled like a baby. Abilene had not done it. Nor had Nellie. And most certainly, Bull had not. It was a singular sensation to be held so gently and yet so fiercely, to be stared down at with so much love. Edward felt the whole of his china body flood with warmth. (page 128)

So dear I love him, that with him, all deaths I could endure, without him, live no life.

Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.

When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.