My research was stimulating but solitary - Alison Bechdel

There are two ways to surpass your parents. Ones is to achieve the thing they had hoped for. One is somewhat easier: just to live longer.

Or maybe he had gotten too inured to death, and was hoping to elicit from me an expression of the natural horror he was no longer capable of...I have made use of this technique myself, however, this attempts to access emotions vicariously...eager to detect in my listener that flinch of grief that eluded me.

Why have I spent so many hours of my life — very possibly as many as are actually recommended — exercising?!