TRAGEDY

  
A newspaper never sufficiently tells the real story of a tragedy. how could it? We live in something called an "information age," but not in an age of meaning. Somehow all the intelligence is scrupulously drained on its way to us and by the time it reaches us, it's bleached and sterile. But the real story is made up of awful quiet moments, late-night silences, tears and teacups and wordless drives on hidden roads, all alone. The real story is made up of privacy and ancient sorrows, and bright in empty lots, not recent events, it is in fathers and mothers and muffled sounds in other rooms, and in what is forgotten.

-- Jon Robin Baitz, The Paris Letter