Nineteen Minutes

by Jodi Picoult

So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was sustenance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.

If everyone else’s opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

Maybe empathy, like any unused muscle, simply atrophied.