The Speed of Dark: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Elizabeth Moon

What I mean is the world is big and scary and noisy and crazy but also beautiful and still in the middle of the windstorm.

I do not think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be less of a burden.

Asking if I want to be healed is like asking if I want to like anchovies.