“There’s your mistake. You have a gift, Hope, one of the greatest ever given. You are outside it all; you are free of it.” “Free of …” “Of people. Of society. You have no need to conform, what’s the point? No one will thank you for it, no one will remember you, and so you have the freedom to choose your own path, your own humanity, to be who you want to be, not some puppet shaped by the TV and the magazines, by the advertising men, by the latest definition of work or play, by ideas of sex, gender, by—” “Perfection?” “By perfection. You choose your own perfect. You choose to be who you are, and
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