Giselle

“When visitors leave, I feel like an actor watching the audience file out of the theater, and it was no different with my sisters. The show over, Hugh and I returned to lesser versions of ourselves. We’re not a horrible couple, but we have our share of fights, the type that can start with a misplaced sock and suddenly be about everything. “I haven’t liked you since 2002,” he hissed during a recent argument over which airport security line was moving the fastest.”
― David Sedaris, Calypso

“But when Polo travelled through the South Caucasus in the thirteenth century, he visited Silk Road territories long since vanished or metamorphosed, such as Lesser and Greater Hermenia, Turcomania, Georgiana, and Zorzania. 'Names are only the guests of reality,' the Chinese sage Hsu Yu noted in 2300 BCE, suggesting that borders are little more than collective myths--fictions that a certain number of people, for a certain period of time, believe are fact.”
― Kate Harris

“Dejemos a las mujeres guapas para los hombres sin imaginación.”
― Marcel Proust, Albertine desaparecida: En busca del tiempo perdido VI

“Another word I’ve added to “the list” is “conversation,” as in “We need to have a national conversation about_________.” This is employed by the left to mean “You need to listen to me use the word ‘diversity’ for an hour.” The right employs obnoxious terms as well—“libtard,” “snowflake,” etc.—but because they can be applied to me personally it seems babyish to ban them. I’ve outlawed “meds,” “bestie,” “bucket list,” “dysfunctional,” “expat,” “cab-sav,” and the verb “do” when used in a restaurant, as in “I’ll do the snails on cinnamon toast.” “Ugh,” Ronnie agrees. “Do!—that’s the worst.” “My new thing,” I told her, “is to look at the menu and say, ‘I’d like to purchase the veal chop.’” A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. “My bad,” for example, and “I’ve got your back” and “You go, girlfriend.” They’re the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.”
― David Sedaris, Calypso