They wanted to help me with my pain.

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)

It made me cry for myself.

All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them.

In the middle of the night, when you're ambiguously ethnic, like me, when you're brown, beige, mauve, siena, one of those lighter browns in the Crayola box. You have to be careful of the cops and robbers, because nobody's quite sure what you are, but everybody has assumptions.

When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.