Credibility Is A Basic Survival Tool.

Activism Is Not A Journey To The Corner Store. It Is A Plunge Into The Unknown. The Future Is Always Dark.

People Rescue Each Other. They Build Shelters And Community Kitchens And Ways To Deal With Lost Children And Eventually Rebuild One Way Or Another.

There Are Those Who Receive As Birthright An Adequate Or At Least Unquestioned Sense Of Self And Those Who Set Out To Reinvent Themselves, For Survival Or For Satisfaction, And Travel Far. Some People Inherit Values And Practices As A House They Inhabit; Some Of Us Have To Burn Down That House, Find Our Own Ground, Build From Scratch, Even As A Psychological Metamorphosis.

It's All About A War Of Social Impulses And Beliefs That Is As Powerful In Its Way As A Big Hurricane.

In Her Novel Regeneration, Pat Barker Writes Of A Doctor Who 'knew Only Too Well How Often The Early Stages Of Change Or Cure May Mimic Deterioration. Cut A Chrysalis Open, And You Will Find A Rotting Caterpillar. What You Will Never Find Is That Mythical Creature, Half Caterpillar, Half Butterfly, A Fit Emblem Of The Human Soul, For Those Whose Cast Of Mind Leads Them To Seek Such Emblems. No, The Process Of Transformation Consists Almost Entirely Of Decay.