He removed several pages of death certificates, which were picked up by another breeze and sent into the trees. Some would fall with the leaves that September. Some would fall with the trees generations later.

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.

Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

I wanted to touch him, to tell him that even if everyone left everyone, I would never leave him, he talked and talked, his words fell through him, trying to find the floor to his sadness.

Hunting will never feed lots of people; it will always be a hobby.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don't cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears - you know, it's a horrible thing.