My dream went all the way back to the beginning. The rain rose into the clouds, and the animals descended the ramp.

This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write, because that was exactly how it felt. We could retell our stories and make them better, more representative or aspirational. Or we could choose to tell different stories. The world itself had another chance.

It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us...on the inside, looking out.

They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.