"The cranes and peonies begin to move in his plane of vision. To clash into each other, along the box’s red Washington apple skin.

"You take artifacts from each place you visit."

"I am still . . . predisposed to prefer Belle to Cinderella, Katharine Hepburn to Grace Kelly."

"It was always somewhat for myself, before I was me . . . . Always somewhat to please that cross-armed child in red."

"So, here I am, a bundle of ironies, a product of privilege and yet its opponent.

"The creamsicle color of my youth, however, has run off into warped, postmodern poolings I would not have recognized from the porch where I licked the dessert from eight-year-old knuckles."

"If there is a way to lose and do it with grace, I don’t know it."

"The color her name carries is one which originated in forests, has been usurped by J-Crew field jackets, and is found folded into Greek dolmas."

"When the banana flowers arrived they looked like that, too, solitary in their parakeet-hued overabundance, lonely like my father."