The important thing is for the characters to feel real, and to be given the humanity they are due. That granting of humanity is what separates a full portrait from a stereotype.

This isn't even something I've feared, because I never knew it was a possibility.

I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won't be so obvious. I am not used to a plainspoken, honest truth.

Moments into minutes. Minutes into hours. Hours into days. Days into years. Years into possibility. This will linger.

New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.

arrears, n. My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I though would go wrong, I never thought it would be that. "It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

..I've been trying to argue myself into thinking these things don't matter, A. Really,I have. But I've lost the argument. And I can't keep having it, when I know what the real answer is.