“…I looked at those patient huddlers on the [Embassy] benches who had hardly moved, and a horrible irony hit me: they wanted so badly to get into the States; I wanted so badly to stay out.”

“...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.”

“And I felt more like me than I ever had, as if the years I'd lived so far had formed layers of skin and muscle over myself that others saw as me when the real one had been underneath all along, and I knew writing- even writing badly- had peeled away those layers, and I knew then that if I wanted to stay awake and alive, if I wanted to stay me, I would have to keep writing.”

“He wanted to be in a bad mood, so be it. Whatever. I had a new baby tiger who could talk to me and thought I was her Loolah!”

“In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.- Bad Blood”

“I used to want you so bad, I'm so through with that because honestly you turned out to be the best thing I never had!”