Some of the acts I’ve committed have been illegal. When I was five, I stole candy inadvertently from the candy store several blocks from my house, on a main road, in the suburb where I grew up, because its sign said, Take One, and later I stole lipstick from the town five and dime, and then shoplifted clothes from department stores, packing a skirt into the voluminous shoulder of a ratty fur coat, and purchased small amounts of cocaine, all relatively mild infractions of the law. Other people, who have scant education, less economic or skin privilege, might have been arrested, convicted, and sent upstate for the same relatively harmless but illegal acts, and other people have records against them that are public, so that anyone can find out what these people have done wrong, and while I have no record of crimes against property or person, nothing that would show up on police blotters or computers, nothing that I am aware of, or that might hurt me, though I am not aware of everything that might hurt me, I have committed illegal acts that have gone undetected, but I know what I have done, and I know what was wrong and illegal. Legally, I am sane.

* from American Genius, pg. 42

** (I could pick literally almost any graph from this book and feel just as happy sharing it. In my top 20 books of all time, I think. Just too fucking good.)