“The Heir and the Spare—there was no judgment about it, but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part.”
“It was comforting, somehow, sitting beside the small boy who was able to navigate their precise location in the vastness. The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here.”
“My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart.”
"2. I was interested in figuring out who I was with other people, and why that person was hard to be. I remember my mother, not a great keeper of friends herself, used to say, 'If you're comfortable with yourself, you'll never be lonely,' which didn't feel like the whole story."