Quote image editor
“I had ambushed myself by believing, to the letter, my parents' definition of me. They had defined me early on, coined me like a word they have translated on some mysterious hieroglyph, and I had spent my life coming to terms with that specious coinage. My parents had succeeded in making me a stranger to myself. They had turned me into the exact image of what they needed at the time, and because there was something essentially complaisant and orthodox in my nature, I allowed them to knead and shape me into the smooth lineaments of their nonpareil child.” — Pat Conroy
I had ambushed myself by believing, to the letter, my parents' definition of me. They had defined me early on, coined me like a word they have translated on some mysterious hieroglyph, and I had spent my life coming to terms with that specious coinage. My parents had succeeded in making me a stranger to myself. They had turned me into the exact image of what they needed at the time, and because there was something essentially complaisant and orthodox in my nature, I allowed them to knead and shape me into the smooth lineaments of their nonpareil child.