"It's a good story,' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.''Please,' I said.And then he did."
- Hanya Yanagihara
"He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship."
"He holds Willem so close that he can feel muscles from his back to his fingertips come alive, so close that he can feel Willem's heart beating against his, can feel his rib cage against his, and his s..."
"He didn't really care if they felt that way or not: he just needed them to say it, he needed to feel that something lay beneath their imperturbable calm, that somewhere within them ran a thin stream o..."
"Thank god he wasn't a writer, or he'd have nothing to write about."
"That morning he feels fresh-scrubbed and cleansed, as if he is being given yet another opportunity to live his life correctly."
"His persistent nostalgia depressed him, aged him, and yet he couldn't stop feeling that the most glorious years, the years when everything seemed drawn in florescents, were gone. Everyone had been so ..."
". . .the particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape."
"He has a vision of his life as a sliver of soap, worn and used and smoothed into a slender, blunt-edged arrow-head, a little more of it disintegrating with every day."
"In those hours he is awake and prowling through the building, he sometimes feels he is a demon who has disguised himself as a human, and only at night is it safe to shed the costume he must wear by da..."