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

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

The great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one's own.

My mother's family were full-on Irish Catholics - faith in an elaborate old fashioned, highly conservative and madly baroque style. I sort of fell out of the tribe over women's rights and social justice issues when I was just 13 years old.

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.

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

I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them.