It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.

She had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks.

The individual's right to pursue his own vision of the best ration of pleasure to pain: utterly sacrosanct.

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can alow us imaginatively to identify with a character's pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?