![“Do you think is is possible for a person to make a single mistake—not do something wrong, you understand, but make a miscalculation—and ruin his [or her] life? … I mean after all. Couldn’t a person be miserable because he [or she] got one thing wrong and never learned otherwise—because the thing he [or she] got wrong was of such a nature that he [or she] could not be told because the telling itself got it wrong—just as if you had landed on Mars and therefore had no way of knowing that a Martian is mortally offended by a question and so every time you asked what was wrong, it only grew worse for you?”
—Kate speaking to Binx Bolling in Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer (Alfred A. Knopf, 1961)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m00nyl3obw1qe0r71o1_r2_500.jpg)
“Do you think is is possible for a person to make a single mistake—not do something wrong, you understand, but make a miscalculation—and ruin his [or her] life? … I mean after all. Couldn’t a person be miserable because he [or she] got one thing wrong and never learned otherwise—because the thing he [or she] got wrong was of such a nature that he [or she] could not be told because the telling itself got it wrong—just as if you had landed on Mars and therefore had no way of knowing that a Martian is mortally offended by a question and so every time you asked what was wrong, it only grew worse for you?”
—Kate speaking to Binx Bolling in Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer (Alfred A. Knopf, 1961)
