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I can tell you this much: the world is a great big log thrown on the fires of love.

Lily comes to this conclusion at the end of chapter 7, after she has her first semisexual interaction with Zach and has witnessed Neil and June have a fight. In these two very intense moments, she comes face to face with love and learns that it not only brings people together but also sometimes drives people apart. Just moments before this quotation, Lily was driving with Zach when she realized, definitively, that she loved him. Then, in the field, she licked honey off of his hand. These two experiences, involving emotional outbursts and physical interaction, only serve to confuse her as to the point of love in life. Lily does not have much experience with the positive effects of love. Her father, whom she loves, never shows any affection for her, and she has reason to believe that her mother, whom she so desperately wants to have loved her, abandoned her before Lily accidentally killed her. This complicated relationship to love leaves her without a clear idea of whether love can be a positive force in life at all, and she reaches the extreme, negatively charged opinion that the fiery passion of love destroys the world. Later in the novel, when Lily learns that love is not only about rejection and longing, her opinion of love softens a great deal, although she never recants on these poignant, passionate words.

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