It does not just excuse our indifference; it dresses the indifference up as wisdom, as realism, as a hard truth that soft people refuse to face.

I thought I was being clear-eyed, that morning, stirring cream into my coffee and pronouncing on the poor.

I was being the exact opposite.

I was keeping my eyes shut as tightly as a person can, and calling the darkness insight.

It would take my own mother, unrecognized in a ruined coat, to pry them open — and the first thing I would see, when they finally opened, was how long and how willfully I had kept them closed.

Chapter 3 — Her Name Is Lucy