The new architecture and urban design of segregation could be called Calvinist: they reflect a desire to live in a world of predestination rather than chance, to strip the world of its wide-open possibilities and replace them with freedom of choice in the marketplace.

People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild one way or another.

You get lost out of a desire to be lost. But in the place called lost strange things are found.

When I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia.

The oil dinosaurs want to win so badly in my home state because what happens here matters everywhere. The nation often follows where California goes.

The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.

Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.