... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember.

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can be clear about exactly why.

I am grateful to Stacy Schiff first of all because she can write a sentence-because she offers us her scholarship with wit, clarity, and grace. Once again, she has done what only the best writers can do: she has made the world new, again.