You see, at the beginning we weren't fighters. We weren't yellers or throwers, even if we eventually came to be. It would take time and much deeper wounds for us to get to that point.

You see, at the beginning we weren't fighters. We weren't yellers or throwers, even if we eventually came to be. It would take time and much deeper wounds for us to get to that point.

The imagined memories had to have as much weight as the real, or we had to at least pretend they did to such a degree that they just very well might have. And so I never questioned Angela about that particular story, or about all the troubling things that it pointed to, content to believe that at least in this version things worked for her better than they did in the one I never heard.

We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.

At night my father often heard sporadic gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. If the war came closer, soon there would be only minor difference between shooting a dog and shooting a man.

There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because we have to. We live in the shadow of every neighborhood. We own little corner stores, live in run-down apartments that get too little light, and walk the same streets day after day. We spend our afternoons gazing lazily out of windows. Somnambulists, all of us. Someone else said it better: we wake to sleep and sleep to wake.

History does influence our lives - every moment. We never sort of live our lives in a linear fashion. We always have these memories and these images from our past that sometimes were not even aware of, and they sort of shape who we are.