prepare a little hot tea or broth and it should be brought to them . . . without their being asked if they would care for it. Those who are in great distress want no food, but if it is handed to them, they will mechanically take it ' ... There was something arresting about the matter-of-fact wisdom here, the instinctive understanding of the physiological disruptions... I will not forget the instinctive wisdom of the friend who, every day for those first few weeks, brought me a quart container of scallion-and-ginger congee from Chinatown. Congee I could eat. Congee was all I could eat.

We imagine things — that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. ... We have no choice, so we do it.

In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices.

I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.

California: The west coast of Iowa.

The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.