I Heard Gillian Say, With A Laugh,

I Guess In Life I Find People Who, At First Glance, Appear To Be Very Typical Or Average, Whatever That Means, And Then Turn Out To Have Hidden Qualities.

It Is Not A Camera, Or A Reporter That Makes Something Real And Genuine; More Often A Camera Or A Reporter Does The Opposite.

She Opened Her Mouth But Did Not Immediately Speak, And I Felt, Simultaneously, The Impulse To Coax The Words From Her And The Impulse To Suppress Them. I Always Thought I Wanted To Know A Secret, Or I Wanted An Event To Unfold – I Wanted My Life To Start – But In Those Rare Moments When It Seemed Like Something Might Actually Change, Panic Shot Through Me.

I Think There Is Still Pressure To Marry. I Think There Is Still Pressure To Have Children. If You're Middle Or Upper Class, Those Pressures Exist At A Later Age Now.

We All Stood And Gathered Our Backpacks And I Looked At The Floor Around My Chair To Make Sure I Hadn’t Dropped Anything. I Was Terrified Of Unwittingly Leaving Behind A Scrap Of Paper On Which Were Written All My Private Desires And Humiliations. The Fact That No Such Scrap Of Paper Existed, That I Did Not Even Keep A Diary Or Write Letters Except Bland, Earnest, Falsely Cheerful Ones To My Family (we Lost To St. Francis In Soccer, But I Think We’ll Win Our Game This Saturday; We Are Working On Self-portraits In Art Class, And The Hardest Part For Me Is The Nose) Never Decreased My Fear.