Water finds the lowest thing available and sits in it. I have had the low place outside our gate cemented twice. Both times the puddle came back about a metre to the left.

From Letters to a Chinese Filipino Friend.

What keeps coming back a little to the left?

At the evening meal, with the household at the long tables and the lamps lit, the younger son asked his father for his share. There was one way to hear it. He was asking his father to be dead.

From A Great Way Off.

What did you ask for before you understood its price?

Where a throne should stand in the judgement hall, there is a desk. Plain grey wood, ink-bitten, older than everything else in the room. A throne wants you afraid of a man. A desk does not need one.

From The Morning at the Back of the World.

Who taught you to trust a ledger?

The staff in Psalm 23 is mish'enet, from a verb that means to lean. A leaning-thing. Not a weapon. A third leg for a man walking all day on ground that turns an ankle.

From Goodness and Mercy Shall Pursue Me.

What have you been putting your weight on lately?

He knows which paragraph is coming. He has been back through the same six chapters for years, the way you check a lock you have already checked, and he closes the book each time with the same verdict against himself.

Can I Still Come Back? is out today.

What took you longest to stop checking?

In the book trade a made-up copy is one completed out of other copies. A leaf from here, a plate from there, every leaf genuine and every leaf from somewhere else, pressed until the join does not show.

From The Made-Up Copy.

What have you seen mended so well you nearly missed it?

The old nurse who raised both sisters is the last one left who was there. She says the seven years did not bow him. They lifted him, and he came out of them richer than he went in.

From But a Few Days.

What have you waited out without counting the days?