Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone be… - Joan Didion

Instead, ourselves the beneficiaries of this kind of benign neglect, we now measure success as the extent to which we manage to keep our children monitored, tethered, tied to us.

"I promised myself that I would maintain momentum.
"Maintain momentum" was the imperative that echoed all the way downtown.
In fact I had no idea what would happen if I lost it.
In fact I had no idea what it was."

Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted.