"What would you read to someone who was dying?" Annie Dillard had asked our class. She wanted this to be the standard for our work. There, at the mem… - Alexander Chee

It isn't just that you fall in love with someone — you each allow yourself new identities with each other, new skins, almost like a cocoon to who you'll be next.

I think you can never know what you can live without. I think you can never know what you will live through. Only when the disaster arrives and you are there does the depth of your real inner resources reveal itself, and not a moment before

After his sisters were taken away, the Japanese occupying force sent my grandfather to Imperial Schools. My first language is Japanese, he tells me. English far away. Sometimes, right after he told me, I would look at him and wonder what it felt like, to have the print of your enemy all the way inside you, right into the way you shaped your thoughts.