Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism.

If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

...a world where a sparrow's fate and that of a man can be decided in the blink of a cat's eye, such is the true measure of time.

She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.

Lament invoked love.Woe invoked wonder.Grief invoked grace.Cry invoked celebration.(Page 80)