Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?

This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'.

And perhaps it was also the case that, for all a lifetime's internal struggling, you were finally no more than what others saw you as. That was your nature, whether you liked it or not.

And no, it wasn't shame I now felt, or guilt, but something rarer in my life and stronger than both: remorse. A feeling which is more complicated, curdled, and primeval. Whose chief characteristic is that nothing can be done about it: too much time has passed, too much damage has been done, for amends to be made.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.