" Of course I don’t expect you to have any feelings for me, since I abandoned you when you were a baby. Nor do I feel any great maternal love for you. I know that very few women would speak this way—would permit themselves to—but when you were born, it was too late for an abortion and adoption was impossible in your father’s family. It’s not as if I ever had some great mission in life. I wasn’t an actress or a scientist or a writer or even a philanthropist. I had no goal, no destiny. But I knew that, restless as I was, I could bring you nothing but misery. "

― Edmund White , A Previous Life