It was like this for me with books. After I’d read every single Nancy Drew book twice, I found The Chocolate War in the school library, and I told the librarian that I liked it and so she gave me The Outsiders. And then my mom gave me Flannery O’Connor, and I started grabbing anything I could find and I had no idea what other people thought was good or what was important. And so I almost never told anyone what I liked because I was terrified that they would tell me how stupid it was. Every single thing that you loved became a source of both intense obsession and possible shame. Everything was
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