I get rational when I panic.

Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.

He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.

I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.

I am not quite myself, I think.But who here is quite himself? And yet there is a way in which we are all more ourselves than ever, I suppose.