the conspicuous consumption of limited resources has yet to be accepted widely as a spiritual error, or even bad manners

The wrong words are impossible when there are no words.

Height isn't something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.

I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece