Life Between Moments: New York Stories

But the storyteller in me overpowers my pragmatism. There was no decision-making process, only the steady impulse to put words on paper until, when I came up for air, I realized what sat in my lap.

Then finishing a graduate degree in the arts afforded me more of the unearned, pseudo-intellectual prestige bestowed by a society that worshiped every fad but valued nothing in particular.

The remainder were as ordinary as ill-fitting tiles in a mosaic (that is to say, they were not ordinary by any measure).

How ambitious can you actually be if your path is trimmed by a John Deere and lined with string lights well before you even arrive?

I say I knew of the caste system, yet I only knew this in the manner that those who have never felt hunger “know” that people can and do starve in places out of sight. There is no emotion attached to the knowledge, nothing visceral, nothing heeded any other way than intellectually.

“To bestow such an acute medical capacity in me, and yet fail to give me a desire to pursue it. Surely the universe offers nothing but a random and sour fate.”

“Why must a man who cares neither for wealth nor intellect bear the responsibility of both, and each to the utmost?”

The people who aspire to great things usually don’t have anywhere near the capability for it. Ambition is too often mistaken for intellect, and vigor for competence.”

You convinced yourself that you’re no longer simply in New York, you are New York.