Ybon was the one who suggested calling the wait something else. Yeah, like what? Maybe, she said, you could call it life.

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

And because love, real love, is not so easily shed.

Do you remember? When the fights seemed to go on and on, and always ended with us in bed, tearing at each other like maybe that could change everything. In a couple of months you'd be seeing somebody else and I would too; she was no darker than you but she washed her panties in the shower and had hair like a sea of little punos and the first time you saw us, you turned around and boarded a bus I knew you didn't have to take. When my girl said, Who was that? I said, Just some girl.

If you were a nerd computer geek in 1982, the amount of isolation you felt - at least what I experienced, or the kids I knew, the isolation they felt - was almost total. They were not part of society; no one thought they were cool.

Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.

Nobody warned me that when you fall in love, you really fall in love forever.