secrets traveled in the family, secrets heavy with emotion. I felt they were like stones stored in hidden pockets in a big man’s overcoat, and wearing that coat meant being weighed down by shame.

there is a detached quality to the eulogy, as if he is surveying his childhood from a great distance, and his link to the woman who bore and suckled and cared for him is missing.

guilt is a social emotion born of our attachments to others, and that nasty form of self-punishment becomes active only when a person is able to see himself as others see him. It is born of reflective self-consciousness.

“Since antiquity, rage has been seen as a feature of the powerful.”

In his memoir, my father remembers that when he met his father, the man was wearing his wedding ring and that it made him happy. Nowhere else in the memoir is there any description of bitterness and alienation between his parents. There is no other mention of wedding rings on or off, or the pain of a naked finger as opposed to one wearing the sign

My mother was not at all worried about the fate of the boys in my life when I was fifteen. She was worried about me, and her ethics included my caring for me. She was worried young men who had the power advantage would manipulate her child. She was worried about my own weakness and desire to please. My mother did not think I would regret

I remember her tired, drawn face. I remember her voice cracking when she scolded us. She could be furious. I have often wondered what I would have done with four children. I had one. She put us all to bed right after dinner—six thirty. I remember lying awake and making up stories because I couldn’t sleep. As an adult, I once asked her why our

A few minutes after I had walked into the house, my mother looked at me and said, “I want you to see it.” She removed her blouse and bra and showed me the long scar where her breast used to be. Her forthright display of the healed but ugly wound had a powerful effect on me. Bodily mutilation is no small thing. I can still see her standing opposite

that is how the city was born: necropolis before metropolis.