He was missing, it seemed, the sense of victimization and woundedness and perpetual anger it took to be black,

There, art was something that was just an accessory to a lifestyle. You painted or sculpted or made crappy installation pieces because it justified a wardrobe of washed-soft T-shirts and dirty jeans and a diet of ironic cheap American beers and ironic expensive hand-rolled American cigarettes. Here, however, you made art because it was the only

as if someone had reached in and grabbed his spine like a snake and was trying to loose it from its bundles of nerves by shaking it

he was the shyest, and so pictures of him always felt more precious than ones of the others.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

he tried to prepare himself for disappointment, even as he yearned to be proven wrong.

The camera wasn’t a great one, and it had hazed every picture with a smoky yellow light, which, along with his poor focusing skills, had made everyone warm and rich and slightly soft-edged, as if they had been shot through a tumblerful of whiskey.

that brief moment of possessing both downtown credibility and the promise of more mainstream success.

he suffered from a lack of passion, as if, at twelve, he had already become resigned to the fact that life would be a disappointment, and he a disappointment to the people in it.