The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know you are sad.

From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be confused for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes. In about one and a half centuries - after the lovers who made the glow will have long since been laid permanently on their backs - the metropolitan cities will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Towns will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples invisible.

In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.

Isn't it strange how upset people get about a few dozen baseball players taking growth hormones, when we're doing what we're doing to our food animals and feeding them to our children?

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 is not rational. Food is culture, habit, and identity.