"Sometimes my sadness felt so deep it must have been inherited.  It had a refrain, and though I evened out my breathing by the time I got to First Avenue, the refrain wouldn't leave me.  It was guttural and illogical and I repeated it endlessly like a chant: Please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me.  All the way home, against the bored, anorexic kids on Bedford Avenue, against the lurid tinkling of bodega music, and the dull thunder of the J train on the bridge.  I heard myself say it out loud when I got into my bedroom.  I kicked the mattress that lay on the floor.  That's when I realized how far away I was.  I saw the ravine.  I had traveled a great distance, just one stop away.  Please don't leave me.  I guess it made sense - I had never felt more alone."
-Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

"Does anyone come to New York clean?  I'm afraid not.  But crossing the Hudson I thought of crossing Lethe, milky river of forgetting.  I forgot that I had a mother who drove away before I could open my eyes, and a father who moved invisibility through the rooms of our house.  I forgot the parade of people in my life as thin as mesh screens, who couldn't catch whatever it was I wanted to say to them, and I forgot how I drove down dirt roads between desiccated fields, under an oppressive guard of stars, and felt nothing.

Yes, I'd come to escape, but from what?  The twin pillars of football and church?  The low, faded homes on childless cul-de-sacs  Mornings of the Gazette and boxed doughnuts?  The sedated, sentimental middle of it?  It didn't matter.  I would never know exactly, for my life, like most, moved only imperceptibly and definitely forward."
-Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

"You go through life thinking there's so much you need.  Your favorite jeans and sweater.  The jacket with the faux-fur lining to keep you warm.  Your phone and your music and your favorite books.  Mascara.  Irish Breakfast tea and cappuccinos from Trouble Coffee.  You need you yearbooks, every stiffly posed school-dance photo, the notes your friends slipped into your locker.  You need the camera you got for your sixteenth birthday and the flowers you dried.  You need your notebooks full of the things you learned and don't want to forget.  You need your bedspread, white with black diamonds.  You need your pillow - it fits the way you sleep.  You need magazines promising self-improvement.  You need your running shoes and your sandals and your boots.  Your grade report from the semester you got straight As.  Your prom dress, your shiny earrings, your pendants on delicate chains.  You need your underwear, your light-colored bras and your black ones.  The dream catcher hanging above your bed.  The dozens and dozens of shells in glass jars. 

The cab was waiting outside the station. 

The airport, I said, but no sound came out.

'The airport,' I said, and we pulled away. 

You think you need all of it.

Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour