What strikes me about it still is not how good she was at it, moving me almost to tears of pity in spite of everything, but how strange she was to me at that moment, and from then on, really. I know Abigail better than anyone else in the world, and if I were asked to explain this or that particular thing, I could probably give a fairly accurate account of her motivations. I can report that duty has never played an even minor part in her decisions; that she is moved solely by the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain; that she derives pleasure from an astonishing variety of sources, and pain from astonishingly few; and so on. I can even predict her behavior, with a respectable success rate.
But I don't understand her at all. To understand you have to do more than predict and explain, You must feel some degree of empathy. I have a greater understanding of cats and internal combustion engines and Iranians than I do of my twin sister, Abigail.
- Jincy Willett, Winner of the National Book Award, p.36
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