"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."

"I stoop over a plate of average pancakes as means of protection."

"I wanted souvenirs of a homeland I always rejected, but in the place of shell-case boxes or shot glasses painted with the red bean paste and hunter green hues of redwoods, I’ll have lessons to share."

"Blue means blueberries and the ceiling at Grand Central."

"I dreamt in nothing but pink."