The Paris Review 209 (p. 83)

I read too much news and not enough fiction for a while. It wasn’t good for my soul. 

“…young people now used their appearances as a means of shocking or disturbing others: he himself – and he was sure the same was true for all of us – had seen hairstyles far more extreme than the one Marielle described, not to mention tattoos and piercings of sometimes apparently violent nature, which all the same said nothing whatever about their owners, who were often people of the greatest sweetness and docility. It had taken him a long time to accept this fact, for he was predisposed to be judgmental and to find the meaning of a thing commensurate with its appearance, and also to be frightened of what he didn’t understand…”