" Children can be alone without anyone knowing it, even when they're surrounded by love. Yes, I must have been an odd child, though it didn't show so much at first. I went about on my own, and was hardly ever with others my age. ... The person I was with most often was my mother. No doubt we were much alike--both serious. We walked and talked with each other as if we were the same age and had the same experience of life. In fact, neither of us knew much about it. She was quite untouched by what is usually called by that name--by all the meanness, malice and confusion which men call life and which they pride themselves on knowing so well. She knew only the simple things: what is was like to bear children and then lose them, what is was like to love a man who had been young and strong and who was growing toil-worn like herself. Such things she knew, and it may be called enough. "

― Pär Lagerkvist