'At the breakfast table I say, "I don't understand Susie at all," and shiver with unhappiness or despair. "I've fed her, bathed her, taken her up in the night, plucked thorns and splinters out of her feet, loved her, taught her to swim, skate, walk on beaches, admire the world, but now when I speak to her she weeps and slams the door, hides in the woods on a fine Sunday morning, seems on the one hand merry and on the other to carry some unanswered question. Is this a glimpse of our inability to understand one another? I seem to know more about a stranger on a train than my only daughter."'
John Cheever, Journals, p.151.
