If you were alone when you were born, alone when you were dying, really absolutely alone when you were dead, why ‘learn to be alone’ in between? If you had forgotten, it would quickly come back to you. Aloneness was like riding a bike. At a gunpoint. With the gun in your own hand. Aloneness was the air in your tyre, the wind in your hair. You didn’t have to go looking for it with open arms. With open arms, you fell off the bike…

Lorrie Moore