My feelings of disgust had been so loud within me, they’d nearly drowned out everything else.

Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.

It was what we Japanese called the onion life, peeling away a layer at a time and crying all the while.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

A mouse who wishes to fool the cat doesn't simply scamper out of its hole whenever it feels the slightest urge.

It's less a matter of looking the other way than of closing our eyes to what we can't stop from happening.

of course the pace of change never slows, even when we've convinced ourselves it will.