“Isn’t it strange? If we can remember, why can’t we remember everything? Why can’t we remember where we once were? The words we once understood? Little snippets of conversation we heard? If I, for example, can remember back forty-seven or so long years, why can’t I remember back forty-nine? Just a few little years more? Why can I not remember my father? I spent almost a year of my life in his presence ‘over there’ until he ‘developed problems’ and evidently blasted himself into literal fragments of despair. So why is it that what I have with me now, instead of a memory, is a solid space that nothing — no memory — can occupy?

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think we can’t remember all the way back because God (to speak metaphorically) arranged it that way. And God arranged it that way, in my opinion, so we can be deceived.” — Deborah Eisenberg, “All Around Atlantis”