I sat down next to her. Took her hand. This can work, I said. All we have to do is try.

If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.

I'm having so much trouble with writing. Maybe if I help other people, it'll be easier for me.

Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.

It's never the changes we want that change everything.

She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.

Dominican men are told to look at women all the time, but they're definitely not told to see them.