“Reading these stories, it's tempting to think thatthe arts to be learned are those of tracking, hunting,navigating, skills of survival and escape. Even in theeveryday world of the present, an anxiety to survivemanifests itself in cars and clothes for far more ruggedoccasions than those at hand, as though to express somesense of the toughness of things and of readiness to facethem. But the real difficulties, the real arts of survival,seem to lie in more subtle realms. There, what's calledfor is a kind of resilience of the psyche, a readiness todeal with what comes next. These captives lay out in astark and dramatic way what goes on in every life: thetransitions whereby you cease to be who you were. Seldomis it as dramatic, but nevertheless, something ofthis journey between the near and the far goes on inevery life. Sometimes an old photograph, an old friend,an old letter will remind you that you are not who youonce were, for the person who dwelt among them, valuedthis, chose that, wrote thus, no longer exists. Withoutnoticing it you have traversed a great distance; thestrange has become familiar and the familiar if notstrange at least awkward or uncomfortable, an outgrowngarment. And some people travel far more thanothers. There are those who receive as birthright an adequateor at least unquestioned sense of self and thosewho set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or forsatisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit valuesand practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have toburn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.”

“A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?”

“Even religious people are vulnerable to this longing. Those who belong to communities of faith have acquired a certain patience with what is sometimes called organized religion. They have learned to forgive themselves. They do not expect their institutions to stand in for God, and they are happy to use inherited maps for some of life's journeys. They do not need to walk off every cliff all by themselves. Yet they too can harbor the sense that there is more to life that they are being shown. Where is the secret hidden? Who has the key to the treasure box of More?”

“In my life so far, I have discovered that there are really only two kinds of people: those who are for you, and those who are against you. Learn to recognize them, for they are often and easily mistaken for each other.”

“But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?…we have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.”

“The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.”