Richard Rodriguez, from Late Victorians:
AIDS, it has been discovered, is a plague of absence. Absence opened in the blood. Absence condensed into the fluid of passing emotion.
Joyce Carol Oates, from Them:
Of his hours spent in bed dreaming, his hours at work, the way in which he put on his shoes – no one cares – though these things are closer to the heart of the real Jules than his delerium of love. For love, being a delerium and a pathological condition, makes of the lover a crazed man; his blood leaps with bacteria that shoot the temperature up toward death. The real Jules, a cunning boy with a sweet look about him, was drenched and overcome by the sweat of the crazed Jules, a Jules in love.
