Stay True: A Memoir (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

We craved new contexts, initiating routines that might eventually feel second nature.

History is a tale we tell, not a perfect account of reality, I continued. You just have to figure out whether you trust the storyteller.

I’d revolted against its oozing softness. Now it was a sedative, the only music I could bear. Not so much a way of escaping the present as a way of tunneling deeper into its layers and textures for a few minutes. A séance.

I’d heard these songs hundreds of times before. But to listen to them with other people: it was what I’d been waiting for.

We seemed to spend hours apart, occasionally intersecting in some unlikely aisle. Everything seemed a possibility, a clue, an invitation to experience new, unprecedented emotional realities. We were enthralled by the same music, but it showed us different things.

Like many immigrants who prized education, my parents retained faith in the mastery of technical fields, like the sciences, where answers weren’t left to interpretation. You couldn’t discriminate against the right answer. But I preferred to spend my time interpreting things.

I knew what I was against, but I couldn’t imagine what stood on the other side.

we would come to recognize that concepts that seem natural to us are full of contradictions. Perhaps accepting this messiness would lead us to a more conscious and intelligent way of living.

Knowledge might not set you free or light your path. It could become a kind of cage.