“Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group—these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.”

David Brooks

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“You could never feel as lonely as you did spending the night at someone else’s house, Lorna thought, hearing the sounds of people sleeping around you and the house opening around you fold by fold as if there were no end to it, like an origami flower coming undone. Every now and then there’d be a thump, but never where there were thumps in your own house, plus the Crocketts’ house had central air-conditioning, which made you feel like a droid held in suspended animation, waiting to be granted the gift of human life.”

Kathryn Davis

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