Haunted -- the memoirs of Tess Clark

"Mrs. Clark says, Sometimes it seems that we spend the first half of our lives looking for some disaster. And she looks down at her straight-out-chest--a look made almost impossible by her enhanced lips. As young people, she says, we want something to slow us down and keep us trapped in one place long enough to look below the surface of the world. That disaster is a car crash or a war. To make us sit still. It can be getting cancer or getting pregnant. The important part is how it seems to catch us by surprise. That disaster stops us from living the life we'd planned as children--a life of constant dashing around." -- C. Palahniuk, Haunted, 2005: 134