‘Mother and daughter laugh together, at the fact they can now connect.’

‘Cleaning delivered very little in terms of salary or cachet, but she could sleep well every night knowing that she had done something honest and good.’

‘Once, long ago, it had been her shyness that trapped her.’

‘The room was silent save for the rustling sound of clothes while Ting slowly undressed.’

‘I want to reach under and wrestle the agony out of my being or crawl out of my own wretched skin but sane people don’t dig and claw at their own flesh.’

‘Her hand is trembling when I take hold of it. Everything begins to make sense now.’

‘They come to me when my pain is at its worst: a yawning bear, black throated.’

‘Heterosexual women don't feel what I feel when I look at your pictures.’

‘She didn’t have that tenderness for me that the boys got in abundance.’

‘Apparently no one wanted to invest in who the Stanford computer science department had anointed as the frontrunner for producing machine consciousness.’

‘He had taken her secret with him.’

‘One minute, a student would be walking to class or eating a baggy of trail mix, and the next minute she would explode into a screaming gulf of fire.’

‘The radio is talking about the spate of recent attacks. There is no link between them, other than they are all unprovoked acts of violence against women.’

‘The Rotterdam canals are painted an early-evening blue, and the last dry leaves tremble on their twigs.’

‘Of all the reasons to return to my hometown, I never thought speaking to the police would be one.’

‘It was her favorite color, and she loved the smoothness of the fabric on her skin.’

‘I imagine the moment Uncle Fi got sick. Who the guy was. Where they met. What they did.’

‘As you walk side by side in silence, you feel the urge to tell her how much you love her.’

‘Soon, she’s all cracks. Soon, she crumbles. I’m left behind with a mess of rubble and dust.’

‘The sunlight prickles my eyes; I wonder when I last ventured out.’