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“He knew he should be devastated, but what he felt was relief. The relationship, without him noticing, had been the longest one he had ever had. He had seen no reason to end it. He had never tired of coming home to their place and finding her naked, playing some new instrument. Why end something that worked over the vague notion that he could love someone more deeply than he loved Zoe? It was a strange moment in Marx's personal development. He was no longer the boy who wanted to taste everything at the buffet, and he considered it a sign of his own maturity that he had not thought to end things with Zoe. But his disdain for his former itinerancy had made it so he could not recognize the reasons a person should stay.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I'm sensual, I like-you-the way you love me, but" he looked down again, "it's not my battle, not my thing, and I know it, and I can't give up my battle. If I do, I'll die and if I die" and now he looked up at Eric with a rueful, juvenile grin, "you won't love me any more. and I want you to love me all my life.”
― James Baldwin