" Things, I know, stiffen and shift in memory, become what they never were before. As when an army takes over a country. Or a summer yard goes scarlet with fall and its venous leaves. One summons the years of the past largely by witchcraft-a whore's arts, collage and brew, eye of newt, heart of horse. Still, the house of my childhood is etched in my memory like the shape of the mind itself: a house-shaped mind-why not? It was this particular mind out of which I ventured-for any wild danger or sentimental stance or lunge at something faraway. But it housed every seedling act. I floated above it, but close, like a figure in a Chagall. "

― Lorrie Moore , Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?