It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

Quando vennero presentati, lui fece una battuta, sperando di piacere. Lei rise a crepapelle, sperando di piacere. Poi se ne tornarono a casa in macchina, ognuno per conto suo, lo sguardo fisso davanti a sé, la stessa identica smorfia sul viso.A quello che li aveva presentati nessuno dei due piaceva troppo, anche se faceva finta di sí, visto che ci teneva tanto a mantenere sempre buoni rapporti con tutti. Sai, non si sa mai, in fondo, o invece sì, o invece sì.

It's always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. Never questions his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned.

There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone.

Otro legado de infancia: cuando a su cuerpo le sucedía algo doloroso o desagradable, Skip Atwater a menudo tenía la extraña impresión de que él no era de hecho un cuerpo que ocupaba espacio sino más bien una zona de espacio en sí en forma de cuerpo, impenetrable pero vacío, dotado de esa sensación vacua y estruendosa que asociamos con el espacio vacío.