It seems to me if you can’t remem­ber your child­hood, your life will feel arti­fi­cial. Your first encoun­ters with the real­ity of being in a human body, and all that that means, and the state of shock that comes from try­ing to exist in this world — those are moments that rarely repeat them­selves later. And maybe that’s why those early mem­o­ries are so frag­ile. Because chil­dren are also frag­ile.

Life has taught me that wher­ever there is a sense of “noth­ing hap­pen­ing,” or a blank space, a mem­ory hole, usu­ally some­thing is being hid­den. There is a kind of silence that is really closer to gag­ging on some­thing unspeak­able.

—Ann Diamond