"One day, he’s going to know. He’ll know your birthday, your middle name, where you were born, your star sign, and your parents names. He’ll know how old you were when you learned to ride a bike, how your grandparents passed away, how many pets you had, and how much you hated going to school. He’ll know your eye colour, your scars, your freckles, your laugh lines and your birth marks. He’ll know your favourite book, movie, candy, food, pair of shoes, colour, and song. He’s going to know why you’re awake at 5am most nights, where you were when you realised you’d lost a good friend, why you picked up the razor and how you managed to put it down before things went too far. He’s going to know your phobias, your dreams, your fears, your wishes, and your worries. He’s going to know about your first heartbreak, your dream wedding, and your problems with your parents. He’ll know your strengths, weaknesses, laziness, energy, and your mixed emotions. He’s going to know about your love for cheese, your dream of being famous when you were five, your need to quote any film you know all the way through, and your fear of growing older. He’ll know your bad habits, your mannerisms, your stroppy pout, your facial expressions, and your laugh like it’s his favourite song. The way you chew, drink, walk, sleep, fidget and kiss. He’s going to know that you’ve already picked out wedding flowers, baby names, tiles for the bathroom, bridesmaid dresses, and the colour of your bedroom walls. He’s going to know, get annoyed at and then accept that you leave clothes everywhere, take twenty minutes to order a Starbucks, have to organise your DVD’s alphabetically, and check your horoscope… just incase. He’ll know your McDonald’s order, how many sugars to put in your tea, how many scoops of ice cream you want, and that you need your sandwiches cut into triangles. He’s going to know how you feel without you telling him, that you need a wee from a look on your face, and that you’re crying without shedding tears. He’s going to know all of it. Everything. You, from top to bottom and inside out. From learning, from sharing, from listening, from watching. He’s going to know every single thing there is to know, and you know what else? He is still going to love you."

"I had this dream that we somehow evolved without vocal chords
And the only way we could talk to each other was by touching our own or each other’s skin
And entire books were written entirely in hugs and hand holding and letting go of each other
And we’d hold and touch and let go of each other in all these different ways to say all these different things
And when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon he just put his hand over his heart and held it there with his other hand and it said everything to everyone watching at home
And the news presenter did the same and so did everyone else
And there are museums you can go to, in my dream, where they have a set of mechanical hands and you put them against your heart and you can hear his exact words as he said them
And when people got married everyone just held each other’s hands in a circle and cried and all the funerals in my dream looked exactly the same
And the people with the lightest fingers spoke so softly
And fishermen and workers had low gravelly voices
And I dreamed this dream for so long, I learned how to speak entirely in touch
And I write poetry on my wife’s back every evening before she sleeps
And her skin and her nerve endings are a kind of paper than only remembers the ink written on it for a moment
And while it loses something in my terrible translation, my favourite work goes

“Shoulder, shoulder, slow, slow, neck, arm, back, curve, slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder, slow, slow, neck, arm, back, curve, slow, slow”

And it is so much more eloquent than anything I’ve ever said and so much more beautiful than anything I’ve ever written, with words."

"You discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable. First, restlessness. The second symptom, absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an illness - monotony, boredom, and death. Millions live like this, or die like this, without knowing."