Late summer readalong

Two weeks from today it's time to hit the German and Biology textbooks. Doesn't that suck? Yes it does. In the meantime, I'm reading a beautiful, spare novel, Out Stealing Horses, written by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born. A passage which may or may not have been written about me:

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, beause they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.