while everything, all forms of social organization, broke up, we lived on, adjusting our lives as if nothing fundamental was happening. it was amazing how determined, how stubborn, how self-renewing were the attempts to lead an ordinary life. when nothing, or very little, was left of what we had been used to, had taken for granted even ten years before, we went on talking and behaving as if those old forms were still ours.

doris lessing                                                                                                   

the memoirs of a survivor