La ciudad desolada

"If even outcast and downtrodden folk like yourselves can't muster a bit of compassion for others," she did, "then there's no hope for this world."

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.

It was a well-established rule that we were to avoid unnecessary eye contact with normals, because looks could lead to conversations, and conversations to questions, and peculiar children found questions posed by normal adults difficult to answer in a way that didn't invite still more questions.

[...] goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them.

Despite everything, this peculiar life was that I'd always wanted. Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

[...] ultimately I was here —now— for one reason alone: because from the day I met Emma I'd known I wanted to be part of any world she belonged to. Did that make me crazy? Or was my heart too easily conquered?
'Maybe I could use a little metal on the inside', I thought. If I'd kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?

"I'll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity"

"[...] I haven't known you too long, but I feel I know your heart, and it's a strong, true thing —a peculiar heart —and I trust you."

[...] because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I'd never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap —and kill me.
I wondered if this strange, sweet pain was love.

She put her arms around me again and we held each other for a long moment, her head on my shoulder, breath warm on my neck, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to close all the little gaps that existed between our bodies, to collapse into one being.