The sheet of instructions from the endoscopy center says to drink clear liquids only. They give grape juice as an example. I can’t quite understand how something purple could be clear, but it gives me hope. If grape juice is clear, can melted chocolate be bouillon?

And Jean was off and rolling. It had taken less than fifty words, spoken with a modicum of interest, to snag her. Like some massive, ornamental carp, she nosed up out of the dark bottom, toward the light.

A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort.

If you have a strong stomach and can listen long enough without fainting or retching, you’ll find that farm-injury stories have an important underlying message: pay attention. Furthermore, when you think things are going well, pay extra attention.

The thing Terry hates most about going back to England, even on vacations, is that it’s like coral: a living dead thing. There is sweet nothing to do. Football. Sky television. The cancer of the reminiscence.