A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.

But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?

Small things may be important to us; to be a sometime anything is sometimes something.

It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.

Ritual is a terribly important, binding cement in a society. If we abandon formality and rituals, we're actually weakening the relationships that exist between people that bind.

They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don't need to be told what to do.