Our conversations were more or less of that type. They seldom offered me anything completely new or totally surprising. But all of them, even the most banal, hit the same spot in me with a steady, gentle hammer blow; they all helped form my character, they all helped to strip dead skins off me, to crush eggshells; and after each one I raised my head a little higher, a little more freely, until my yellow bird pushed its beautiful predator’s head out of the shattered globe.
