There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.

No; he could be ruined again and again by hope, but he would never be capable of belief.

Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.

Do what you gotta do and stay fly

Fathering imposed an obligation that was more than your money, your body, or your time, a presence neither physical nor measurable by clocks: open-ended, eternal, and invisible, like the commitment of gravity to the stars.

Bina rolls her eyes, hands on her hips, glances at the door. Then she comes over and drops her bag and plops down beside him. How many times, he wonders, can she have enough of him, already, and still have not quite enough?

... and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second.