Lost in Transition

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

—Stephen Fry, Moab is My Washpot

Let the dead bury the dead. He has never been sure what that meant. Those few callous words in the Bible.

—The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje