“I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.”

“I knew if I sat there another minute, I'd never be able to get beyond everything that was going to happen from that day on. My life would disappear inside his. So I got up.”

“I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.”

“I had enough to wrestle, wrangle and settle back into, with this one life of mine. Besides, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if something was not my problem, I probably did not have the solution.”

“I realized I had moved from being a misfit in a culture I wasn’t a part of, to being a freak in a culture I was supposed to be in.”

“I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations”