Small change, small wonders - these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life.

Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self."

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.

There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.

How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.