It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent.

Maybe he hadn't thought the war through. It had seemed like simple fun when he had first pictured it, with a glorious beginning, a difficult but valor-filled middle, and a victorious end. He hadn't accounted for the fact that there might not be much of a resolution to the battle, and he hadn't imagined what it would feel like when the war just sort of ended, without anyone admitting defeat and congratulating him for his bravery.

The idea of 'Voice of Witness' is to let survivors and witnesses of human-rights abuses tell their story at length. It started with a course that I co-taught at U.C. Berkeley journalism school back in 2003.

How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated then found hugely comforting.

Loneliness is just a thing that I'm not personally interested in. So far, it hasn't been on my docket of things to write about.

Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads?

He remained, weeks after awakening, in that period of early-morning consciousness that allows easy re-entry to dreaming. His limbs still tingled with the residue of sleep, and most days he wanted badly to allow it to overtake him again.