Two bits from one of John Updike's _Rabbit_ books always come to mind: upon looking through his host's medicine cabinet, Rabbit muses, "people are always a litt

Two bits from one of John Updike's _Rabbit_ books always come to mind: upon looking through his host's medicine cabinet, Rabbit muses, "people are always a little sicker than you think." And there's a description of looking down on cars from the window of an airplane in flight--how smoothly, from a distance, the cars seem to travel. Almost everyone has troubles that disappear from a distance.