"I don't know if now, having lived and died the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I've every known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits—a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go? Why, in all their experiments, did the Magi never try to capture the purity in a bottle? Perhaps it is lost to us when we become sexual creatures, and no magic can bring it back. Perhaps I only remember it because I spent so long trying to understand the love that Joshua felt for everyone" (p. 26).

"'Well, if the village idiot named it, I'm sure it's a good thing.' [Joshua]
'There you go, you got it.' [Biff]
'Got what?'
'Sarcasm.'...