Jonah Leigh Ramos’s Reviews > The Best American Essays 2006 > Status Update

"Back in the room, you ask him what's wrong, plead with him to tell you. You can talk about anything, you assure him, anything at all." -MICHELE MORANO, "Grammar Lessons"

"You find yourself talking more than usual, trying to fill the empty space with cheerful commentary, but it doesn't help." -MICHELE MORANO, "Grammar Lessons"

"You were thrilled at the breaks in his depression, breaks that felt like new beginnings, every time. Days, sometimes even weeks, when he seemed more like himself than ever before... 'She's pulling me through the death-wish phase.'... Do you see the pattern?" -MICHELE MORANO, "Grammar Lessons"

"And sometimes you'd say, 'Yeah, but I have to go to the store first,' and his eyes would light up. In the supermarket he'd push the cart and you'd pick items off the shelf." - MICHELE MORANO, "Grammar Lessons"

"Maybe you were tired too, in need of cheering up yourself because suddenly your perfect guy had turned inside out." - MICHELE MORANO, "Grammar Lessons"

Enjoying Michele Morano's "Grammar Lessons"!!! <3 <3 <3

"The pain we feel is not the same as the hum we know, and it is the pain, not the hum, that is the price of being conscious, and the point of being human." - ADAM GOPNIK, "Death of a Fish"

"Does Bluie know he's Bluie?" he would ask when we watched the fish swimming in his bowl in Olivia's room. "I mean, I know he doesn't think, Oh, I'm Bluie! But what DOES he think-- does he know he's HIM swimming around? Or is he just like a potato or something, only with fins, who swims but doesn't think anything?"... What does it feel like to be someone else? - Luke

-ADAM GOPNIK, "Death of a Fish"

"Of course death happens once, but we may die more than once..." - EUGENE GOODHEART, "Whistling in the Dark"

"... friendship depends upon a common fund of memories, of shared experience." -EUGENE GOODHEART, "Whistling in the Dark"