You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.

we become the stories we tell ourselves

What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.

Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself.

She'd never imagined it like this-when she thought of someone (a woman like herself)losing her mind, she'd imagined shrieks and wails, hallucinations; but at that moment it had seemed clear that there was another way, far quieter; a way that was numb and hopeless, flat, so much so that an emotion as strong as sorrow would have been a relief.

There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.

She will remain sane and she will live as she was meant to live, richly and deeply, among others of her kind, in full possession and command of her gifts.