He laughed once, at something Mason said, and looked almost surprised to hear the sound come out of him.

I understood, watching it, how much of what the court had read as his instability had never been instability at all.

It had been the entirely reasonable disintegration of a man with nowhere to sleep and no one to call.

Give a drowning man solid ground, and he stops thrashing, and everyone marvels at how much calmer he seems — as though the thrashing had been a character flaw rather than a man trying not to go under.

My son had never needed to be cured of anything.

He had needed a floor.