"When one of your oldest friends texts you, you answer immediately. When that friend texts you a photo of her engagement-ringwearing hand, you drop the phone."
"My friend Jackie drove me the 50 miles or so from the larger city where she lived down to the state capital, the location of the state’s main medium-security prison. I’d talked on the phone the day before with my friend, going over the final details of my visit and the endless rules to follow."
"Pearl Smith did not trust a living soul. 'Living' is an important distinction because her one surviving relative was a wicked, degenerate nephew, while her primary confidant was her late third husband with whom she regularly spoke." A nurse's tales from an emergency room floor.
"The room, which was situated in the bowels of an old Lower East Side tenement building, was hot and smelled like a hundred people’s sweat, even though it was mid-January."
"I intentionally dress up to erase the label I owned yesterday. Today, I’m a circus ringmaster; yesterday, a disco girl; the day before, an air-force-pilot-meets-janitor."
"This was before he was my grandfather, before he was Papa. Before his visit to a new country defined his family’s future. Americanness was only a hope."
"Asking my mother about her experience in the ’80s is a bit like asking my dog about his former life as a stock broker—so far removed from my reality that I find it difficult to comprehend."
"From a young age, Slima knew he wasn’t meant to subscribe to anyone else’s rules. For many years now, even decades, Slima has publicly identified as a mutant, something he feels he has known as long as he can remember."
"While I have been going to school and working in the photo industry, she has been faithfully carrying out the responsibilities of an 'international liaison officer' in the Israeli Defense Forces." A profile of a friendship.