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„This country is such a confounding mixture of interdependence and freakish isolation, progressiveness and backwards thinking, charity and cruelty. There is no way to translate this into something my old country can understand. It's easier for them to see clichés and caricatures, to use "American" as a put down all on its own, like my mother still does.“

„He is familiar but deeply exotic to me, just like this city, this country. I love him, but there are certain things I might never truly understand about what drives him, what undoes him. His body speaks more eloquently than he does. He is tender and okay with being careful. He leaves me in peace. He, like this incarnation of me, keeps all his shit on his side of the line, like a good American.“

„Conversations never run out in New York, there's always so much to tell and discuss. Sparks fly.
New York crushes in on even my modest life, making it louder and more exciting, more pressure, more of everything, a wonderful spasm of sorts. My breath is more urgent. I snatch a little rest here and there and then get caught up all over again. I use every last scrap of myself.“

“Life is hard enough. Take what is offered, because it might not always be around. You can't be harder and harder, stronger and stronger, […] until you compress into a diamond. People aren't mineral or metal. They are soft flesh, where love and pain echo through the body. Sometimes you have to ease up, to let go. You never know what will be able to help you. Compassion and gentleness are also endless.”

“If someone misunderstood my request or simply chose to be cruel, it would crush me. I just can't take that risk. I have to remain standing, folding in on myself and raking energy from the corners to get to work, running a private but familiar survival program in which I would sacrifice limbs to keep going.”

For years, I've considered it an established fact that the female body is a pain in the ass. Despite all its unique talents, from youth it's constantly wracked by hurricanes, snow and rain — by cramps and pains, premenstrual craziness, menstrual craziness, postmenstrual craziness, pill-related craziness; waves of uncontrollable rage and […] not to mention the smorgasbord of mindboggling changes that is pregnancy.