" Or maybe I was trying to break out of my skin, thinking about how my parents had been actors in roles and the roles were to be my father and mother-and the reason I could see those as roles was that in such extremes, in private, they must have let down their guard and expressed their doubts, their fears, the extent of their despair or hopelessness as our situation worsened and the world revealed the outlines of its true harshness. But because of me, there were whole eternities of hours each day when they had to pretend otherwise, and how I wish I could go back and tell them not to do that. That all I wanted was to see their true selves, remember their true selves. "

― Jeff VanderMeer , Borne (Borne, #1)