““Things aren't what they seem. What a truth to learn at such a tender age! More discouraging was the way in which everyone around him—his parents in particular—seemed so certain of what was and what wasn't. They were intent on his learning what they knew, but they knew nothing, nothing that was in any way important. They knew what they could see and hear and touch, but they didn't know anything about what lay on the other side of their neat, self-contained reality. They didn't know how that other world could impose itself on their own and steal all that was precious, leaving only a black absence that itself was something palpable and other-than-real.””
