We remained talking, fighting gently or viciously for what seemed like hours, but it was only minutes or perhaps a second, because it was only a dream.

When you are rich, your past disappears. You get everything you want when you want it . . . Everyone wants to know you. Everyone wants to be your friend.

Her father kneels and unclasps the urn. Above the waves she falls graceful as snow, my sister, my Sonora.

We are all cursed. We live in the era of the curse. A world that cannot be fixed. The best thing would be an alien ship. Another planet. One with three moons. But you, I saw you in my dreams. I saw you coming. You came to heal my broken heart. That's why I named you Ahlam.

There is the body of history ever atop of us, and the body of memory rustling within us. Between the two, we are crushed.

We would survive even ourselves, as long as we were together.

I lit a cigarette. 'Go ahead, take a smoke,' my father said. 'It won't kill you. Only sadness will.

Find someone who loves you more than you love them.

It was all so foolish then, as it is now, as it is forever. To be in love with beauty. To try to hold on to it.

When I returned to New York, it had already changed. I always wished things could just remain.