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.

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.

Comport yourself with grace under pressure.

People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.

The people who say poverty is no excuse for low performance are now using teacher accountability as an excuse for doing nothing about poverty.