Was suddenly aware, almost in a panic—a joyful panic—of the wealth of possibility out in the world, and also within myself.
He was playing on the climbing structure by himself—or by his own, as the children sometimes charmingly put it.
And of course, you can't ever really know what happens to another person, or what they think happens to them, which amounts to the same thing.
With someone you’ve always known and have loved without thinking, there’s the strangeness of knowing everything and nothing about them at the same time.
When you’re young – but even now – how do you understand this?’ he said when he first spoke of it, walking the night streets. ‘You can’t understand it. It makes no sense. You can allow yourself to be...
When you are the woman upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all. It’s a small thi...
This was the fall of 2004. The wider world was deeply fucked, and home also. Two American wars raging—bloodbaths each, bloodbath major and bloodbath minor, ugly, squirrelly hateful clandestine wars ma...
There are social struggles, and the agonies and embarrassments of puberty...and the weight of the world that falls upon each of us in varying degrees, as we finally relinquish childhood's clouds of gl...
Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid.
So: now a new year, a new beginning. I've vowed not to complain. I'm too good at it, and need to practice other skills. I've also vowed to work very hard...
Maybe, instead, I’ll set the world on fire. I just might.
Maybe I made her feel trapped, like she'd outgrown me. But from my side, it was like I knew her too well, I saw her too clearly, when she no longer wanted to be known: she wanted to try out a new role...
It's the strangest thing about being human: to know so much, to communicate so much, and yet always to fall so drastically short of clarity, to be, in the end, so isolate and inadequate.
It's a different story depending on where you start: who's good, who's bad, what it all means. Each of us shapes our stories so they make sense of who we think we are. I can begin when Cassie and I we...
It wouldn't have surprised me to learn that nobody we knew had ever really seen the building: it was the sort of thing you wished you'd done, without actually wishing to do it.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Lili's world was not so different from my dioramas, or even from Sirena's installations: you took a tiny portion of the earth and made it yours, but rea...
I wish it hadn't happened; but what good does this do? I can wish it wouldn't happen again - but here too, if I'm wishing the impossible, it will do no good at all.
I was suddenly aware, almost in a panic – a joyful panic – of the wealth of possibility out in the world, and also within myself. My
I imagined that the building carried the sadness of the women who'd been trapped there...I didn't see them--there was no visible mass of ghosts peering out of the hollowed windows--but I couldn't help...
I discovered I could hate her a bit, and because I didn’t tell her so, because our friendship went along on this reduced, part-time scale that didn’t allow for arguments, there was no noticeable chang...