"The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow."

"The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand."

"I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean…"

"I don’t know how long I sat there reading about it, but at some point I’d read enough. I leaned back and stared at th…"

"Suspended between fear of the past and fear of the future, I recorded the dream in my journal. Then, without any expl…"

"By the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had…"

"To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frai…"

"My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me th…"

"Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure."

"The irony was that if Dad was bipolar—or had any of a dozen disorders that might explain his behavior—the same parano…"