The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

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

I quickly realized that the reason they had so much time available to them was that they weren’t wasting it doing things that women spend hours doing elsewhere in the world: they had no clothes, for example, and so did no laundry.

And Esme’s reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.

Suddenly the thought of my life, its relentless march forward, seemed almost unbearably oppressive.

It reminds us that love, at least the sort of pure love that so few of us will admit to feeling, is a complicated, dark, violent thing, an agreement not to be entered into lightly.