" All she really wanted was to protect her daughter's joy in unicorns. It was like loving a soap bubble, she knew, treasuring that innocence. Yet nothing else in her life right now moved her in the least. She often thought that must be a little pathetic; surely she should have found a larger cause by now. But the larger causes of her youth had bled away. Her sense of the Big Picture had fractured and decayed. She loved her daughter, the blessing of a good book, a glass of wine after the day's wave of vanity had passed. "

― Tim Farrington , The Monk Downstairs