Jude St. Francis, my best friend and the love of my life

• Still, "Maybe we should call these The Happy Years," he told Jude one morning. It was February, it was snowing, and they were lying in bed, which they now did until late every Sunday morning.
• And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
• It reminded Willem that their relationship wasn’t a rescue mission after all, but an extension of their friendship, in which he had saved Jude and, just as often, Jude had saved him.
• "I just feel like I’m going to be this series of nasty surprises for you," he said at last, and Willem shook his head. "Surprises, maybe," he said. "But not nasty ones."
• Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?
• And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child's whims and wants and insecurities.
• Life is so sad, he would think in those moments. It's so sad, and yet we all do it.
• "But part of me wonders if it was always meant to be this way; I mean, I’ve dated and dated for decades now, and maybe the reason it’s never worked out is because it was never meant to, because i was supposed to be with him all along."
• "And who are you?" "I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go."
• He realizes that this is the way it is, the way it must be: you don’t visit the lost, you visit the people who search for the lost.
• "I won't say a word. I'll see you tomorrow. And Jude—" But he didn't, or couldn't, say anything else. "I know," he said. "I know, Willem. I feel the same way." "I love you," said Willem, and then he was gone before he had to respond.
• Dear Comrade, he told Willem, because that was how Willem and he had sometimes addressed their e-mails to each other—Dear Comrade; Dear Jude Haroldovich; Dear Willem Ragnaravovich—which they had begun when Willem was shooting the first installment in his spy trilogy
• What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.
• You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.
• “Willem,” he says aloud into the empty apartment. “Willem.” He closes his eyes, as if he might conjure him that way, but Willem doesn’t reappear.