Intensity

It is the purpose for which we exist. This reckless caring.

There was more truth in fiction than in science.

Without anguish and agony, there was no hope of winning.

Hope, which had always seemed ennobling to her, now seemed as dehumanizing as feverish greed, as squalid as lust, just an animal hunger for more life at any cost.

Bitterness can be as pleasing as sweetness when you learn that every experience, every sensation, is worthwhile."

Lovers, if they were worthwhile, required more than simple commitment; they needed revelation, sharing, the bond of emotional intimacy.

Risk is at the heart of an intense existence.

The reef of the soul is built from varied experience, not from repetitive sensation.

Power is living while others inevitably perish.

Vess considers, not for the first time, that there is a similarity between the texture of melting chocolate and that of thickening blood.