So you chose not to be part of the bands of children who group together for the sole purpose of excluding others, and people look at you and say, poor girl, she's so isolated, but you know a secret, you know who you really are. You are the one human being who is capable of understanding the alien mind, because you are the alien mind; you know what it is to be unhuman because there's never been any human group that gave you credentials as a bona fide homo sapien:

That's me insane to the root Not insane. Driven by a sense of purpose that is frightening

[He] wondered if it was already too late to teach her how to be a human

So he wasn't like the adults who always believed lies as long as they made her seem to be the child they wanted her to be

What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself.

The trouble with me is that I'm an outsider. And that's a very hard thing to be in American life.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world. Not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.