“ I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel. ”
Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.
~ Joan Didion
I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story.
The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.
We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.
