Severance Quotes
"The End begins before you are ever aware of it."
"I liked to stay over on hot summer nights because the basement was cool and damp at night."
"New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive."
"We talked about this. It's this place, this city and what it turns a person into."
"Everything was a status symbol and everything cost too much."
"What do you call a cross between a yuppie and a hipster? A yupster."
"I changed the subject. Where are you going? When?"
"Shen Fever is difficult to detect. Early symptoms include memory lapse, headaches, disorientation, shortness of breath, and fatigue."
"The future is more exponentially exploding rents. The future is more condo buildings, more luxury housing."
"In sleep it came to me. The name of the song, I mean: 'Who Is It.'"
"Why move to America if you can’t drive?"
"Spectra is a company run by people, and we take your health very seriously."
"Arriving, we did exactly what we thought we wanted to do."
"The dresses slid on easily in the morning. They slid off easily at night."
"In the meanwhile, my college friends slowly found their ways to credible internships and entry-level jobs."
"I don’t want to be part of the meaningful postdivorce narrative he was constructing."
"I could feel the bridge above me rumbling and bouncing with the weight of vehicles."
"Littering is only a problem if everyone does it."
"The fever was arbitrary. The fact that we were alive held no special meaning."
"Stalking is an aesthetic experience. It has its rituals and customs."
"The only sound that would cut through this ebb and flow was Bob."
"It was a comfort to see it again, an artifact from a previous life."
"Most consumers couldn’t really tell the difference between what was mass-produced and what was artisan or handmade."
"But I’d always overorder a bit, accounting for a five percent wastage, because Bible paper was so thin that it often ripped on web presses."
"The Daily Grace Bible had sold very well. I’d always felt fond of it, maybe because it was the least ostentatious Bible I’d produced."
"And David said unto God, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man."
"The first uncle I used to know better than all the others, though we’re not related by blood."
"The second uncle also lives in Fuzhou. I know even less about him than I do about the first."
"My grandma maintains that of all her daughters, only my mother has married wisely."
"It was late. The rest had long gone to sleep, sealed inside their tents."
"So we’ll make it rain inconspicuously with kush!" Evan said, undeterred.
"You could make one joint, if that even."
"The closest approximation for this gaze is when someone is looking at their computer screen, or checking their phone."
"You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone."
"I was just running. I was running back to where I came from."
"She’s— He gulped, still panting. She’s still behind."
"Shen Fever is a newly discovered fungal infection."
"I watched Manhattan. That scene when Woody Allen’s character, depressed and lovelorn, lay on the sofa, listing all the things that still made life worth living."
"The city was empowering. Even if a woman doesn’t have anything, the movies seemed to say, at least there is the city."
"It took me a while to understand that the floor in the doorway was wet."
"The city was so big. It lulled you into thinking that there were so many options, but most of the options had to do with buying things."
"The golden calf gleamed, this tangible thing."
"I was afraid of what would happen should the stories begin to ebb. I braced myself, then eventually lost myself in her telling."
"You you you you you, she’d say, as if accusing me of being me."
"The sun moved across the bathroom floor, from the window to the door."
"Playing Homeless was what it sounded like; I pretended that I was homeless."
"We didn’t come to America so you could be homeless. We came for better opportunities, more opportunities."
"Your only child, he appealed to her. He was my permissive parent. He could not deny me."
"The last days are for relief, not for truth."
"Sometimes, she just talked to herself in English. It actually wasn’t that strange."
"Dear God, I began in English. Please bring back Zhigang, beloved father and husband, back from the hospital."
"We sat in a booth next to the window, and it was there, with the view of trucks ambling down the freeway, that he seemed to lose himself in memory."
"I just want for you what your father wanted: to make use of yourself."
"I hadn’t slept well the night before. I had lain in the cheap bed of my Bushwick studio, listening to the sound of my breath."
"What are you doing here? he said. I’m going to work."
"The elevator screeched to a standstill. It paused in suspension, emitting a mechanical moan."
"The light was coming from Blythe’s office. Navigating through the tangled maze of gray cubicles, I found her inside, typing on her computer."
"Somewhere in the office, a phone was ringing."
"The office was almost empty by the end of October."
"In the end, there was the empty office."
"It was dark inside, smaller and more sparse."
"True. But that’s not the whole story. This place holds a great deal of sentimental value for me."
"I’ve probably spent more time here as a kid than anywhere else."
"When I was hungry, I’d eat free samples in the food court."
"This place is special and important to me, even if it’s just a nothing mall to you."
"Do I look like I’m going anywhere? People take care of me, they feed me, they do my laundry."
"The city was operating on a different kind of time."
"I could feel the elevator wavering, as if undecided what to do."
"If a horse rides through Times Square and no one is there to see it, did it actually happen?"
"The places you post about—I would’ve never thought about."
"We’ll send someone to take a look at the elevator. But I don’t have an ETA. We’re short-staffed."
"What am I going to do at this point, go sailing in Martha’s Vineyard?"
"That there’s still civilization. In midtown more than anywhere else, there’s infrastructure."
"I wanted something different for Luna, the child of two rootless people."
"To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms."
"To live in a city is to consume its offerings."
"It’s as if they all abandoned their cars during a giant rush hour."
"To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems."