The story of your life, described, will not describe how you came to think about your life or yourself, nor describe any of what you learned. This is… - Alexander Chee

I needed to teach writing students to hold on — to themselves, to what matters to them, to the present, the past, the future. And to the country. And to do so with what they write. We won't know when the world will end. If it ever does, we will be better served when it does by having done the work we can do.

The strange amber twilight I’d lived with was gone, and in its place was some terrible new brightness. I’d gone from feeling lost in a dream to lost in wakefulness, as if I might never sleep again.

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