And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of...

If she could no longer be called beautiful, she possessed something better-a knowledge of beauty; it’s inflated value, it’s inevitable loss.

Kate lost a mother,” I said, “but I lost a nothing.”Kate doesn’t feel that way,” Jack assured me.But what about everybody else besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what she was when...

It’s better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won’t get...

Lying is a full time occupation, even if you tell just one, because once you tell it, you’re stuck with it. If you want to do it right, you have to visualize it, conjure the...

Boys will be boys, that’s what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display....

It was frankly sort of confusing, the way everyone stared at our bodies exactly as they tried to erase the ideas of our bodies from our minds. We were supposed to get over ourselves but...

Mr. O’Donnell was at the library counter, performing the sort of grim rituals librarians perform with index cards and stumpy pencils and those rubber stamps with columns of rotating numbers. “Ms. Auerbach! What will it...

They were sorting, or classifying. It’s easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as entertainment. If the enemy tries to look like you and act...

Jocks were pretty much exempt from the standards that bound the rest of us. Teachers and administrators humor them because it’s in everyone’s interests to coax them through school and get them out of the...

The families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it’s the look...