It's like you're born with all these blessings, only you don't realize they're blessings until you lose them. And if you're thick-headed enough, like me, you don't even realize you've lost them, not until they come back to you.

I was also ready to believe, though, that whatever good things I had managed to set upright could topple at any second.

What I wanted was to write a memoir that was immersive rather than reflective, to resurrect a long-gone version of my own consciousness. I kept expecting that sooner or later the effort would come to seem like second nature to me, but it never did.

It's like you're born with all these blessings, only you don't realize they're blessings until you lose them. And if you're thick-headed enough, like me, you don't even realize you've lost them, not until they come back to you.

If your reading life and your friendships overlap, that's just a nice coincidence - a case where the conversation you're having with books and the conversation you're having with actual human beings happen to dovetail.

I was wholly invested in my friendships. I might have tested them sometimes, but only to reassure myself that they were permanent. A mistake, of course.

There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.