" The end, now that it had arrived, threw new light on what had come before. All the reminders I had received over the past fifteen years that I was remarkable—the highest-paid advertising woman in America, et cetera—were now swept away by this final reminder that I was not. I had loved this place, and I had succeeded here, but my successes had done nothing to change it in any real way, no more than Clever Hans the counting horse had opened up opportunities for equine bookkeepers. All the articles that I had clipped and mailed home to my mother to prove that I was right and she was wrong now seemed to be saying something different: that I was a novelty, not a paragon. A freak. The exception that p’d the r, all right. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk