It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out.
I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be “Sir”. Do you maggots understand that?
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
My mom holds her accent like a shotgun: with two good hands.
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.
I only ever met one man I wouldn’t want to fight.
If you come with me on this journey, I think a word of warning is in order: manic depression is not a safe ride.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
The first thing I remember tasting and then wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of strawberry jam. I suppose I was about four.
We’re living in a weird moment. Everything has become archivable.
War entered my childhood world not with the blasts of rockets and bombs but with my father’s footsteps as he walked through the hallway, passing my bedroom toward his.
With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately toward the freedom of the Americas.
It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Some people are just all show. Well, I don’t mind that if the show is worth watching.
Everything within takes place after Jack died and before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry in the cool tannin-tinted Guaviare River, in east-central Colombia, with forty-two locals we hadn’t yet met.
When my boyfriend’s mother called me to tell me that he was dead, I was standing in a CVS holding a bag of Halloween candy. For a long time, I could only write about him in metaphor. Lucky for me, the world is full of ghosts.
My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark.
Apple doesn’t often fail, and when it does, it isn’t a pretty sight at 1 Infinite Loop.
This book is totally true, except for the parts that aren’t. It’s basically like Little House on the Prairie but with more cursing.
Mister Haneda was senior to Mister Omochi, who was senior to Mister Saito, who was senior to Miss Mori, who was senior to me. I was senior to no one.