...books were still to me as they had been when I found them: the only magic. - Alexander Chee

Why was there never an opera that ended with a soprano who was free?

Waiters and escorts both know that indiscretion is a career-ending move. You reveal a secret only if you are never going back again.

Alone with myself and my talent, I chose it in some way I never had before. I chose myself also. The person I was and had been all along, the one who had not belonged to the place where she was born, nor to the places she found along the way, the one always under the mask, here she came out and breathed the air and felt at home. I had always believed that to be this person might destroy me or the world, and so as the world seemed to end, this made the end of the world seem nearly a paradise.