Ally’s Reviews > Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me > Status Update

“I want everything from you that I don’t have”

“O, when I accidentally dropped a carton of cherry tomatoes on the floor:

‘How pretty! Do it again!’

So I do.”

“I would not be surprised if half of New York City has also put dibs on the Monet that Emily chose. This made it no less hers.

I brought her in closer to her new acquisition: ‘Emily, meet your Monet. Monet, Emily.’

Words did not fail her: ‘Hello, beautiful,’ she whispered.”

“(are they mine still?)”

“(is it mine still?)”

“(was it mine still?)”

“(is he mine still?)”

“I am glad to be on planet Earth with you. It would be much lonelier otherwise.”

“Looking back, every life-altering decision I’ve ever made has seemed, at first blush, misguided, misjudged, or plain foolish—and ultimately turned out to be the opposite: every seemingly wrong person I’ve fallen for, every big trip I’ve splurged on, every great apartment taken that I could not realistically afford. And, really, what is pursuing writing but a case study in an impractical career…?”

“I’d brought with me several small personal items that I had not been able to—but wanted to—part with. Each subsequent bridge became an occasion for a ceremonial purging and a fresh round of tears. By the time I reached London Bridge, where I scattered the last of his cremated ashes, the only significant thing remaining of Steve’s that I had not thrown in was myself. Not that I didn’t consider it.”

“I would be with a lover, […] I’d have him wrapped in my arms as we talked in the aimless, dreamy way that lovers do.
He has fallen asleep, as though I, of all people, possess the arms of Hypnos. […] As I draw him closer and nuzzle his neck, I cannot help remembering what the Greeks so wisely knew: The god of sleep has an identical twin, Thanatos, the god of death.”

Just shoot with a gun me next time

“Sometimes I’d sit in the kitchen in the dark and gaze out at the Empire State and Chrysler buildings. Such a beautiful pair, so impeccably dressed, he in his boxy suit, every night a different hue, and she, an arm’s length away, in her filigreed skirt the colour of the moon.”

Okay that’s gorgeous but why do we have to assign genders to buildings pls