Priya Iyer

“head to one side. ‘Not wanting to shatter the illusion. Hiding how much trouble we were in. I’ve been reading a lot about people who are depressed. People who live with extreme stress and those who only see one way out . . .’ She felt her hands shake. ‘They often fall into two camps. Those who fall apart externally, seek help, battle it publicly, and then there are those who don’t, can’t. It’s this group of people who interest me most. They are skilled in the art of hiding. I think that my dad must have been like that.”
― Amanda Prowse, The Art of Hiding

“Tango had helped me forget, if only temporarily. Perhaps it was the having to concentrate so damn hard, but it seemed more than that. Something about the connection, the struggling to sense with the palms of my hands which way my partner wanted me to move, the being with another person so completely, the comfort of our contact.”
― Anonymous

“The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“Every time he returned from a trip to Lebanon, I wanted to sit him down and discuss, in detail, every bite of food he’d eaten. He was happy to oblige, but nothing he described, even the elaborate meals with family and more family, made his eyes go wide like the man’oushe. It’s street corner bakery food, he said. you get it wrapped in paperand off you go. They’d stopped on a whim because they were hungry and needed a snack, and it turned out to be the best Lebanese food he’d ever put in his mouth. The flatbread was chewy, but with a crisp exterior. It was blistered (okay, my word, not his) and warm, topped with za’atarorcheese, filled with tomatoes and pink pickled turnips and mint and folded over on itself. I had to stop him. I couldn’t take it. Breads like this were not unfamiliar to me; I’d had them before. But those were breads that came in plastic bags. No matter how fresh they say the bread is, it’s still bread that you get in a plastic bag. Warmfrom-the-oven man’oushe is something breaddreams are made of, something you are only going to get from your own kitchen.”
― Anonymous