Greenfield drew on a story about Caitlin Thomas, the wife of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was asked what she thought of a biographer's account of her husband's life. Caitlin's response — 'I know a better truth than Brinnin's' — struck Greenfield as the perfect expression of intellectual maturity: the recognition that simple accounts are almost always incomplete. Greenfield urged the Williams graduates to carry this instinct with them — to be skeptical not just of propaganda and spin, but of any explanation that seems too neat, too tidy, too satisfying. The 'better truth,' she argued, is always messier, more contradictory, and harder to summarize. It requires holding multiple perspectives simultaneously and resisting the comfort of certainty. This was the essential skill of good journalism, good citizenship, and good thinking.