“Everything was ours, our reality untamed by time and misogyny, and the price we’d pay for living remained alien to us.”

“We are sometimes called upon to compromise our sense of propriety in the name of love.”

“Damn, I felt how my dad looked. BLACK. Bleachers. BLACK. Dancefloor. BLACK. Fools started shoving motherfuckers. Did a fight break out? “

It’s Saturday morning and we have until Sunday night. I know our weekend routine better than my weekday schedule, storing it in the part of my brain reserved for things I actually like.

“What he didn’t understand was that the more heavenly our experience, the starker its contrast with my mind’s occupations, the wider the chasm would yawn between us, the more alienated I’d be. It was like the story of Moses, in which the water of the Egyptians was turned into blood. A curse had crippled me. Shown blue ocean, I saw crimson gore.”

I’ve figured out other things too, things that would be obvious to anyone but me, like how those friends weren’t really my friends. They were Buddy’s. And going our own ways would feel like nothing.

Beneath her floral shampoo, I swore I could detect it: the tinny scent of recycled air. It gave me a thrill, almost arousal, from pondering whether she noticed something similar in me, that elephant odor of aged skin.

Your father held one of your mother’s notebooks where she wrote the names and addresses of the homes she cleaned. A few sticky notes stuck out like orange tongues from the notebook as he flipped through the pages.

Oh, terribly undisciplined. I've never been the writer who sits down at a desk in the morning and writes every day—I just couldn't. I have gotten better about it, and less precious—letting myself write on my phone, for example, rather than needing a perfect environment.