“And just like that, I knew what I wanted. Something I had always wanted. But it was so unrealistic it hadn’t even made it to my wish list.”

“I had always wanted to go down that path at some point, I just hadn’t met anyone to go down it with. which begged another question: why hadn’t I? What was wrong with me? Oh yes, I knew exactly what I was crying about. It was the fear of being a last resort. Of missing out. And not just on one Saturday night of partying with people I didn’t know. On life. The life that everyone else seemed to find so easy to have.”

“Once I knew that I wanted to be an artist, I had made myself into one. I did not understand that wanting doesn't always lead to action. Many of the women had been raised without the sense that they could mold and shape their own lives, and so, wanting to be an artist (but without the ability to realize their wants) was, for some of them, only an idle fantasy, like wanting to go to the moon.”

“I always knew what I wanted to do, I just didn't know I could do it.”

“I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.”

“I sighed and went back to filling out the application. The whole thing made me feel like my family didn’t think I had any right to want something of my own. It bothered me, but I knew I couldn’t hold it against them in the long run. We couldn’t afford the luxury of wants. We had needs.”