“Baby and I would talk about growing old together.”
“We have a flag that we fly. We have a portable flagpole.”
“I get a glimmer as to what she’s feeling right then, and it also gives me a way to share how I’m feeling with her.”
“It is unlikely to think that someone who was trained by Strom Thurmond would end up being like brothers with me, my father being a civil-rights activist.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. I’m not in the place that I need to be, to be positive for the kids. Give me a boost; I need a laugh.”
“When he walked in and sat next to me, it was really weird. Like, Can you talk in my ear very closely so I can make sure it’s you?”
On the impulse to tell the person next to you when a big story breaks
“Something that totally changes your life like that, even if it’s overwhelmingly good, it still is overwhelming.”
“As a queer woman in the military, seeing both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the combat-exclusion policy repealed [during my career] was momentous.”
“My kids know they’re a product of me and their dad, but that Debbie was our oven … They love her even more knowing the sacrifice she made.”
“A lot of people told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘But I love books and reading.’”
“I used to joke and say, ‘If I died in my apartment, I knew that Barbara was the person who would find me.’”
“With friendship, there is this expectation that it’s supposed to be easy, which … is not an honest assessment of what any long-term, intimate bond looks like.”
As states and cities waffle on pandemic restrictions, public health has become individuals’ responsibility.
“If you cross an ocean, you’re constantly together, and you just become a family.”
“When they were babies, we raised them together. We were always at each other’s houses, and the girls were always together.”
“I think it’s important that you remember who your friend is, that they are not just a set of political policies.”
“It was an all-day game. I was thinking about it almost an obsessive amount.”
“There’s nothing nicer than opening the mailbox and seeing something friendly, something that’s not a bill.”
“We don’t have this superficial friendship where I’m only best friends with you when things are funny and happy … I’m also here for all the transitions and all the rough patches.”