It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

With my hand in his, I looked at all the apartment buildings with rushes of love, peering in the wide streetside windows that revealed living rooms painted in dark burgandies and matte reds.

Mom flipped through the magazines like the pages needed to be slapped.

You're the perfect girl', he said, rubbing his chin. 'You expect nothing.

I'm obsessed with adolescence. I love to write about people in their 20s. It's such a fraught and exciting and kind of horrible time.

My eyelids are my own private cave, he murmured. That I can go to anytime I want.