This can be funny, like my client and I are both in on a joke, both playing dress up. It feels silly in an almost innocent way, as artificial as childhood games in which the carpet was lava or all your friends were super heros. Other times I do not feel like a real person. I feel entirely like a character in a script. It’s liberating because it absolves me of responsibility. All the moves I should choose become obvious and therefore barely choices at all.

— Strange Life

Lucy and I had ceased to be distinguishable from everyone else and every day the ground was getting softer, swallowing us up a little bit more. We had each come to realize that no one was going to save our lives, and that if we wanted to save them ourselves, we only had one skill that afforded us any hope at all.

— Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty