" He stretched out on the floor with another mug of wine and imagined a federal law ordering everybody to switch parents at a certain age. Then butter-fingered Elizabeth, her family's cross, could come sustain his mother forever and mend all her possessions, and he could go south and live a happy thoughtless life assisting Reverend Abbott at Sunday vespers. There would be a gigantic migration of children across the country all cutting the old tangled threads and picking up new ones when they found the right niche, free forever of other people's notions about them. "

― Anne Tyler , The Clock Winder