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.

I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.

Wherever I am, let me never forget to distinguish want from need

Tomorrow these villagers would carry their secret icons into the church without any priest and light the candles themselves, moving together in single-minded grace. Like the school of the fish, so driven to righteousness they could flout the law, declare the safety of their souls, then go home and destroy the evidence.

This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.

I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.

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