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1 " Stop being silly. You know what I mean.” No, she really didn’t, and she hated when people made that assumption. If she had known, why would she bother asking? "
― , Let's Talk About Love
2 " It was confusing and awful and made her want to break things. "
3 " Flailing like a long-limbed Muppet hopped up on sugar. "
― Claire Kann, , Let's Talk About Love
4 " Why did she have to spend the rest of her life coming out over and over and over...? And once she did, would people always expect her to talk about it? It would always be a huge deal, she would always be subjected to questions, and she would always have to defend herself. Would it ever stop feeling like A Thing, a barrier, between her and everyone else? "
5 " I really want us to grow old together, you know? Go through all the typical life stuff together, even if that means we can only e-mail each other once a week because you moved to the middle of nowhere in Nebraska with your ten kids, and I'm still California because it's amazing. Just like in that one movie - we'll never lose touch with each other, ever. Is that weird?!No, Feenie said. It's perfectly fucking normal. "
6 " What made sex so integral that people couldn't separate the emotional love they felt from the physical act?Love shouldn't hinge solely on exposing your physical body to another person. "
7 " If knowing you’re asexual makes someone see you differently, then they don’t deserve to be in your life. "
8 " Love shouldn’t hinge solely on exposing your physical body to another person. Love was intangible. Universal. It was whatever someone wanted it to be and should be respected as such. For Alice, it was staying up late and talking about nothing and everything and anything because you didn’t want to sleep—you’d miss them too much. It was catching yourself smiling at them because wow, how does this person exist?? before they caught you. It was the intimacy of shared secrets. The comfort of unconditional acceptance. It was a confidence in knowing no matter what happened that person would always be there for you. "
9 " But you know! You get it. I'm not trying to trivialize anyone else and what they have to do, but if I go to my parents and say I'm a lesbian, they would know what I meant. If I went to my siblings and said I'm bisexual, they would know what I meant. If I tell anyone I'm asexual, they're going to look at me like there's something wrong. They're going to tell me to go to a doctor. They're going to tell me I'm too young to know what I want or I'm still developing. Or they'll tell me how important sex is to finding a good man. Or they'll think they can fix me, that I'm lying because I don't want to sleep with them. It's hard enough trying to explain that word, so how in the hell am I going to explain I'm biromantic asexual? They're really going to think I'm making this shit up. "
10 " Why can't I find someone who loves being with me, as is, as much as I love being with them? "
11 " The bottom line was her body had never shown so much as a flicker of sexual interest in anyone. But that didn’t mean she liked being alone. That didn’t mean she wasn’t lonely. That didn’t mean she didn’t want romance and didn’t want to fall in love. It didn’t mean she couldn’t love someone just as fiercely as they loved her. "
12 " What made sex so integral that people couldn’t separate the emotional love they felt from one physical act? "
13 " Black people have to be perfect, inhumanely good at everything, and even then we can fail, because that's the way the system is set up. It is rigged against us. "
14 " You can’t let one or two bad experiences stop you from being happy. "
15 " First of all”—Feenie pointed at her—“you are not broken and I don’t ever want to hear that again. Second, being attracted to one person doesn’t necessarily change who you are. Maybe you’re graysexual instead of straight up ace. There’s just something about the way Takumi’s genetic code arranged his face and body that appeals to your brain chemistry. It’s insta-lust. Enjoy it for what it is. "
16 " Neither of them believed in forever, but for now wasn’t nearly long enough. "
17 " Everything you do and say is so endearing, and it's ridiculous because I can't stop thinking I need this person in my life. I need to be near you. If I could stand close enough to you maybe I could absorb some of your shine. "
18 " It’s okay to miss her or what you had because it was special to you, I think. When someone you love does something terrible to you, everyone tries to make you feel better by saying you’ll get over it and that you should hate that person, but you don’t. Maybe you can, maybe you should, but you don’t want to. So, yeah be upset. "
19 " Through it all, being demeaned and feeling disheartened and dispirited, Alice was expected to be nice. To overlook the microaggressions when they continuously rained down on her and find solidarity wherever she could. She was expected to endure in silence. "
20 " Alice’s head locked into place as realization sank in. Meeting Takumi had challenged everything she thought she knew about herself, made her work to find out who she was on a fundamental level. He challenged her in the best way possible, wholly unaware of the effect he had on her, pushing her so far out of her comfort zone she had to question everything. She had discovered, no, was still discovering, who she was now, who she wanted to be, what she could and could not handle. He had given her a reason to reconnect with herself. "
