Sometimes, I Write.

I know that I am a pretty biased interpreter of the events that led to my escape, but I believe I met my mother there, in that final instant. Not her ghost but some vaster portion of her, her self boundlessly recharged beneath the water. Her courage. In the cave I think she must have lent me some of it, because the strength I felt then was as huge as the sun. The yellow inside you that makes you want to live.

—Karen Russell, Swamplandia!