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

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.

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

If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.

Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.

The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.