After you ask how much you want something, ask how wise you are to want it.

From Alfred’s journal

Switch spent the whole afternoon working at the latch on the feed bin behind the hardware store, and when it finally gave he ate until he could not climb. He lay on the gravel afterward looking betrayed, as though the bin had tricked him. For years I thought wanting was its own evidence; that the pull of a thing told you something true about the thing, the way hunger tells you about seed. But the bin had no opinion of him. After you ask how much you want something, ask how wise you are to want it. I have not worked out who is supposed to answer the second question, since it is the same bird asking, and he is hungry too.