Quotes About Solicitousness

Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother thinks was merely cute may have been lethal.

Someone in Dr. Morse's childhood must've told him that the polite thing to do to get by in the world (in his world) was to memorize one fact and one fact only about each of your colleague's family members, so that when you met that colleague, or met their family members, you could, by mentioning this fact, appear solicitous and engaged.