her interest was not the beginning of a friendship but more of a measuring. - 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.

In some way I had never known how to express, I’d feared I would have to become the first of my kind, whatever my kind was, should I be allowed to survive — that which history has never seen before.

It’s much like writing an essay or including autobiographical content in fiction — to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see.