When I Read Biographies, I Skip The

Every Immigrant Family, It Seems, Has Someone Who Does Not Belong In The New Country They Have Come To. It Feels Like Permanent Exile To That One Brother Or Wife Who Cannot Stand A Silent Fate In Boston Or London Or Melbourne. I’ve Met Many Who Remain Haunted By The Persistent Ghost Of An Earlier Place.

We Own The Country We Grow Up In, Or We Are Aliens And Invaders.

I've Always Loved History And History Is Collage, It Is A Juxtaposition Of The Good And The Bad And The Strange, And How You Place Those Sentences Together Changes The Whole Mood Of A History.

She Had Lived In That House Fourteen Years, And Every Year She Had Demanded Of John That She Be Given A Pet Of Some Strange Exotic Breed. Not That She Did Not Have Enough Animals. She Had Collected Several Wild And Broken Animals That, In A Way, Had Become Exotic By Their Breaking. Their Roof Would Have Collapsed From The Number Of Birds Who Might Have Lived There If The Desert Hadn't Killed Three- Quarters Of Those That Tried To Cross It. Still Every Animal That Came Within A Certain Radius Of That House Was Given A Welcome-the Tame, The Half Born, The Wild, The Wounded.

So We Came To Understand That Small And Important Thing, That Our Lives Could Be Large With Interesting Strangers Who Would Pass Us Without Any Personal Involvement.