You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.

In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us deep into these spaces - but the same way you know a Hollywood movie won't end after thirty minutes, you carry in yourself the implicit contract that the novel won't throw you out of itself 'til the very end. That bulk of pages is a form of consolation, of security.

[Immigrating] didn't burn out my desire to travel, though that can happen. There's nothing like immigration to make you want to just stay put. But what I think of as home is this life between Santo Domingo and the parts of New Jersey and New York City that were my childhood, so in my mind it's like home is all those things combined.

She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.

Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.

If we do not begin to practice the muscles of having a possessive investment in each other's oppressions, then we are in some serious trouble.

You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.