It's probably nice to know your parents were once not your parents. - Richard Ford

Then, what's the matter?' I wonder, in fact, how many times I have said that or something equal to it to a woman passing palely through my life. What're you thinking? What's made you so quiet? You seem suddenly different. What's the matter? Love me is what this means, of course. Or at least, second best: surrender. Or at the very least, take some time regaling me with why you won't, and maybe by the end you will.

He was becoming who and what he was always supposed to be. He’d simply had to wear down through the other layers to who he really was. I’ve seen this phenomenon in the faces of other men — homeless men, men sprawled on the pavement in front of bars or in public parks or bus depots, or lined up outside the doors of missions, waiting to get in out of a long winter. In their faces — plenty of them were handsome, but ruined — I’ve seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.

. . . no matter the evidence of your life, or who you believe you are, or what you're willing to take credit for or draw your vital strength and pride from — anything at all can follow anything at all.