What do babies dream of? She must be dreaming of the before-life, just as I dream of the afterlife.

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.

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?

But I still couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found out, the less I understood.

It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

I woke up once in the middle of the night, and Buckminster's paws were on my eyelids. He must have been feeling my nightmares.

I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.