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

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

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

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

They say the Lord's Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women.

But that Franklin trip changed me profoundly. As I believe wilderness experience changes everyone. Because it puts us in our place. The human place, which our species inhabited for most of its evolutionary life. That place that shaped our psyches and made us who we are. The place where nature is big and we are small.

The Sarajevans have a very particular world view - a mordant wit coupled with this unbearable sadness and... truckloads of guts, you know.