Bastiano Romano (The Five Syndicates, #3)

by Parker S. Huntington

Here is my lesson—let yourself feel pain. You are allowed to lash out. You are allowed to seek escapes. You are allowed to be bold in your pain. You are allowed to learn from it.

I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.

—Fannie Flagg

Yet it would be your duty to bear it…it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what is your fate to be required to bear.”

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. —Stephen King

“Look at her again, and she will be the last beautiful thing you see.”

Bastian could use me all he wanted and spit me back in mismatched pieces, because I’d do the same to him, and our broken pieces would learn to fit together. That is love. It isn’t perfect. It’s finding a way to be imperfect together.

Grief is another name for love. It’s all the love he wants to give but no longer can. For all the love trapped in his body, there’s an emptiness in places once full and a fullness in places once empty. A lump in his throat. A hole in his soul.

Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair. —Soren Kierkegaard

A man truly loves you when missing you is his hobby and caring for you is his job and making you happy is his duty and loving you is his life. —Unknown