I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someo… - David Sedaris

"Do you think it was my fault that she drank?" my father asked not long ago. It's the assumption of an amateur, someone who stops after his second vodka tonic and quits taking his pain medication before the prescription runs out. It's almost laughable, this insistence on a reason. I think my mother was lonely without her children — her fan club. But I think she drank because she was an alcoholic.

If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt?

Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.