The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

time as a sea, a mirrorlike, endless stretch of emptiness, and indeed this dream—“sea time,” he called it—became a sort of joke, a shorthand for talking about subjects he hoped one day to pursue but had no way of engaging in at the present moment.

we speak of managing time, but it is the opposite—our lives are filled with busyness because those thin chinks of time are all we can truly master.2

parents disappoint us in many ways and it is best not to expect anything of them at all, for chances are that they won’t be able to deliver it.

Life was elsewhere, and it was frightening and vast and mountainous and uncomfortable. I believe Owen knew this as well, the way some children know that they want to remain close to home, and it was this mutual determination—that where we were beginning would not be where we stayed, nor where we ended—that, more than interests or predilections, both united us and encouraged us to endure the obligations of childhood

until we could leave it behind and pursue life in earnest.

lack of interest has a kind way of eliminating all potential nervousness.

The problem with being young and in a singular place is that one assumes that one will inevitably find oneself in an equally foreign and exotic location at some later point in life.