ashley

“I was overcome by the sense of how much more there was in his life than in mine, by the things to do and distances to travel, while I never had done anything or gone anywhere, and never would.

All I had ever done was visit my parents all the time - first one parent and then the other, with no sign of it ever stopping. Worse yet, I had no one to blame but myself. If my mother told me not to do something, I didn't do it. Everyone's mother told them not to do things, but I was the only one who listened.

The eternal pauper in the great marketplace of ideas and of the world, I had nothing to teach anyone. I didn't have anything anyone wanted.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot