The stabs in her heart she felt when she woke, and the panicky doubt that her life was in her grasp, not fraud or failure, not entirely—that was a brief misery and one she could set aside by putting on the light and reading for a while. She used to ask herself, What more could I wish? But she always distrusted that question, because she knew there were limits to her experience that precluded her from knowing what there was to be wished.

Marilynne Robinson, Home