[Insects] are not only cold-blooded, and green- and yellow-blooded, but are also cased in a clacking horn. They have rigid eyes and brains strung down their backs. But they make up the bulk of our comrades-at-life, so I look to them for a glimmer of companionship.

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too.

I work mornings only. I go out to lunch. Afternoons I play with the baby, walk with my husband, or shovel mail.

Geography is the key, the crucial accident of birth. A piece of protein could be a snail, a sea lion, or a systems analyst, but it had to start somewhere. This is not science; it is merely metaphor. And the landscape in which the protein "starts" shapes its end as surely as bowls shape water.

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.

The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

The irrational haunts the metaphysical.