The Guardian

“I walk out of my cave and down to the Valley of the Kings, as I call it. There are no houses, no people. Some think the “wild west” still exists in the US, but it’s hard to find a place where you can see for miles and miles without human habitation. At Garth’s, it could be the 1800s, or 10 million years ago – or 100 years into the future.”

“Every summer, our nervous little nuclear family became the heart of a sprawling community. Parties were thrown in our honour. Relatives usually separated by social status or ancient feuds broke bread together for the first time that year.”

“Watching the disciples pay their last respects, it struck me how even for the most devoted and grief-stricken, Joshua’s death might be experienced, in part, as a liberation.”

“‘Clearly this is not a biological dog,’ my husband said. He asked whether I had realised that the red light beneath its nose was not just a vision system but a camera, or if I’d considered where its footage was being sent. While I was away, he told me, the dog had roamed around the apartment in a very systematic way, scrutinising our furniture, our posters, our closets. It had spent 15 minutes scanning our bookcases and had shown particular interest, he claimed, in the shelf of Marxist criticism.”

“To an outside observer, I was a little girl in a sparkly leotard throwing a hoop back and forth, but in reality, my life in rhythmic gymnastics felt less like a sleepover-friendly teen drama than one of those hardboiled stories about a steely renegade on a single-minded quest – usually a man, hardened by middle-age, gripped by an obsession so pure and powerful that it alienates everyone around him. At nine years old, I was that man.”

“It’s so pervasive that it’s easy to overlook the fact that to be caffeinated is not baseline consciousness but, in fact, an altered state. It just happens to be a state that virtually all of us share, rendering it invisible.”

“At the core of most motives for violence are assumptions about the intentions of others. Seb believed that a sinister collective was intent on keeping his mother hidden against her will.”

“Today, many circus elephants in Europe are reaching old age. Campaigners want them placed in specially built sanctuaries, where they can enjoy retirement with their own kind. But their owners insist that for the elephants, being separated from their human “families” would be traumatic.”

“Once, a friend asked me: “How good are you at passing?” – that is, passing as Chinese-Chinese, not Chinese American. I wanted to pass, but like the many Asian Americans who, like me, have tried to go back to the motherland and find a place there, I could never “pass” for long.”

“The system has not collapsed. The ‘system’ barely existed. The government – this one, as well as the Congress government that preceded it – deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was.”