As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, … - Salman Rushdie

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", everyone of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

From birds she learned how to sing; from cats she learned a form of dangerous independence.