'You've got mail!' exclaims the cheery automaton at America Online. The flag on the mailbox icon waves invitingly on my computer screen. For a second, I'm 10 years old again, waiting for the postman's whistle to slice the stillness of an Australian afternoon.

We are not the only animal that mourns; apes do, and elephants, and dogs. Yet we are the only one that tortures.

Moral certainty can deafen people to any truth other than their own.

Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.

A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

How strange it is, Anna. Yesterday, I have filed in my mind as a good day, notwithstanding it was filled with mortal illness and the grieving of the recently bereft. Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.