She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, pre… - John Irving

But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.

In our hearts... there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners - even in their native lands. In our hearts... there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity.

She was convinced that women were as often victims of themselves as they were of men.