Ariana > Recent Status Updates

“You were breaking ground, so what did you think it was going to be like? The first one always has it bad. I just thought you were strong enough to deal with it."

"What are you, a child? You think you’re the first Black person to deal with racism on the job?"

Barbara let that hover in the air between us for a moment, while I wondered again why it was my fate to deal with women whose insults and compliments sounded exactly the same.

“Where do we belong? Literally nowhere" I fell silent, this time not sure if we were still talking about publishing. Teresa and I had bonded in our high school years over feeling like outsiders: she, a brown-skinned native-Spanish-speaking immigrant; me, a biracial Black private school-educated Harlem girl. She wasn't Spanish enough, I wasn't rich enough, neither of us was Black enough.

"Now that I'm achieving all these goals at work, I don't know why I'm not more fulfilled. And I can't complain to anyone because I sound like a bougie ingrate.”

"We have a million single friends who'd cut off a pinky to be with a guy like him.." I finished half my glass in one gulp. “It's just weird that the less I recognize myself, the more he adores me."

He was generous and smart and attractive. And I was damaged goods, a jumbo shrimp with imperfect morals and a mountain of credit card debt. Joseph made me feel like a better version of myself-in part, I hated to admit, because he thought I deserved him.

"Black girls don't sell magazines."

“How confusing my very presence must have been to those well-connected dilettantes, erudite Ivy Leaguers, and fabulous fashionistas. Only the gay guys in PR laughed at my jokes, though they did so while snickering at my outfits. But no way was I going to let any of them hold me back. So, they would have to stay sick of me.”

“Most importantly, I wanted to warn my editor in chief title because I was a talented visionary, not because my mom’s friend decided to elevate me into the role so he could have his way with me whenever he wanted.”

“When you invest in a “transitioning” neighborhood, that’s just what you sign up for. The payout on the other side — once the city’s hottest restaurants have opened a few blocks away, once you’re within walking distance of not one, but two Whole Foods — is the reason you slog through.”

“All it takes is one wrong suggestion to be stuck with a boy forever.”

“It's not enough. The money isn't enough. The time isn't enough. Nothing I do is enough, not even lighting myself on fire. Daisy has been haunting the space behind my heart for months, and I don't know what to do with all of this leftover love.”

“What about justice?”
“You live in the same country I live in, child?”

“Here, the make of my bag, the quality of my clothes, the style of my hair, none of that matters. My skin speaks first.”

“They often passed each other in the kitchen like strangers in a shopping.”

“And I was their baby. A little girl watching her mom, trying to understand how to be a person.
And at one point my mom was a baby too. A little girl watching her mom.”

Why did I choose this job? Why did I pursue this? Why didn't anyone warn me that I'd spend days telling people not to cook meat in the bathroom while hearing others chant from outside that I'm a pedophile? I just wanted to be around books and help people. I could go home right now, lie under the lavender comforter on my bed with my cats, and apply for a job in a law library or as a cataloger. I don't have to do this.

“I don't consider if Joy will think I'm a nag, or find me unattractive, if I look bad when I tell her I'm upset. I speak to her openly. I don't weigh the pros and cons of expressing my honest thoughts and feelings to her. I'm not plotting what I do, say, and wear like I'm an actress in a play prepping for a scene. I'm not playing the part of her partner. I am her partner.”

“I'd sooner defend the image of me as a hideous, withered hag, rather than the image of me as a coy, quiet, sexualized teenaged girl. It's appalling that i was trained to behave the way I was when I was younger, and I think of it as a societal betrayal and a depraved way to treat girls.”

“We’d pay thousands of dollars to feed distant relatives dry, unseasoned chicken, and we'd take photos with big fake smiles in our kitschy wedding regalia, like clowns. I'd post the photos on social media annually to assert how inspira-tionally normal I was.”

“She has no idea that I considered her, and other people, so much that I diluted myself for years, sacrificed, a significant portion of my life, just to win her and other people’s approval.”

Very hunger games coded. Game makers are deciding whose task is to dance, and who has to take a poop on the concrete.

I love this ! What’s real when cameras are rolling, and everyone is rewarded for secret tasks?

“She would say that this is just a job, and while I care about my job, it isn’t my whole life. The grass is going to keep growing. The stars aren’t going to burn out. At the end of the day, I’m standing here telling people to mute their porn. Nothing is so serious.”

I think this book is going to fundamentally change me.

“The government wants to manipulate you, that’s the only reason it exists.”

“The most eminent zoologist, whose article claimed the virus was a lie, had an opportune accident. He thinks it was all staged to reduce overpopulation. For as long as he can recall, there’s been talk of the scarcity of resources.”

“The ones who decided she was expendable, who rendered her life meaningless in their relentless pursuit of progress.”