It took me twenty years of living with my father to accept the idea that being good could be good enough.

The perception of a child who has not yet learned to protect itself by developing the tunnel vision that keeps out ninety percent of the universe.

When rationality begins to break down, the circuits of the human brain can overload. Axons grow bright and feverish. Hallucinations turn real: the quicksilver puddle at the point where perspective makes parallel lines seem to intersect is really there; the dead walk and talk; a rose begins to sing.