Think back to when you were young and you'd tucked a book (like me, was it a biography of Bette Davis or a book of Dorothy Parker's reviews?) into your science textbook and your teacher didn't reveal you because, as he later explained, he'd thought, "Well, at least she's reading." They all had an unquestioned confidence in the potential energy that emanated from you, and you could coast on that energy--and more so, on that confidence--for twenty years, being the bright one, the promising one, gimlet-eyed and flinty.

And then--

There's no resounding clap of thunder, no cymbal crash, just a gradual, sinking apprehension. You realize only when it's gone that potential energy dissipates. Or even worse, you realize that you are the outcome of that potential. This is all there ever was; and what you are is what you were going to be.