Important Quotations Explained
I was subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy…. It didn't take much to bring this sensation to life, along with the certainty that everybody but my mother saw through me and did not like what they saw.
It was truth known only to me, but I believed in it more than I believed in the facts arrayed against it. I believed that in some sense not factually verifiable I was a straight-A student. In the same way, I believed I was an Eagle Scout…. And on the boy who lived in their letters, the splendid phantom who carried all my hopes, I saw, at last, my own face.
Whatever it is that makes closeness possible between two people also puts them in the way of hard feelings if that closeness ends.
When she was worried she wore a pale, tight-lipped mask…. Now the mask was gone. She looked young and pretty… As we walked we made plans…. We were ourselves again—restless, scheming, poised for flight.
When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights…and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we…have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever….
