In a way, every parent is sort of dependent on the benevolence of the society around them to take care of their children.

She was struggling against a current that brought her inside herself.

So much of our conversation about love is possessive. "You are mine. And if you stop being mine, I will hate you." And so exploring non-possessive ideas of love and friendship is important. Which is not to say we should just break down monogamy, I'm not taking a simplistic point of view. But, in addition to these examples of possessive love that we already have so much of, let us also explore what examples of non-possessive love and affection mean.

We're all united in this, that every human being migrates through time, that the place we grew up in in our childhood is gone when we're in our 50s and 60s and 70s.

In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.

You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.

You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.