“Now I have to face a certain set of questions: What if I had taken an interest in them? What if I had helped them with their studies? What if I had tried to teach them a love of reading? After all, that one should study, that reading is enjoyable, that books are something you can love—these are not universally distributed attitudes, but are in fact closely correlated with social conditions and with the background you come from. These very social conditions led my younger brothers, like almost everyone else around them, to refuse and to reject that towards which some miracle had managed to move me. Should I have realized that such a miracle could in fact happen over again?”

—Didier Eribon