"This is an instance where what Ruth experiences might be said to be total identity, a very stable identity. She cannot alienate herself from herself to know what she is thinking. So, if you think about that construction, "I don't know what I think," it posits an "I" who could know the self. That's two entities, not one. So, if you don't know what you think, maybe it's because there isn't that objective distance between an "I" and a self. You're not self-alienated in that way that, remember, Ambrose always is in Lost in the Funhouse. That's his curse, that he is alienated from himself, and he can never integrate. So, it's like he's Lily and Nona in one person, two entities but somehow the same. Ruth, on the other hand, is like an indivisible substance, but because it's indivisible it seems, the logic here imagines, it's ghostly. Somehow, it's like an essence or something unsubstantive, because it doesn't have that alienation built into it.

How can you exist in the company of other people, if the structure for even knowing oneself doesn't seem to exist in the mind?