Everything burns if the flame is hot enough. The world is nothing but a crucible.

Perhaps there are just some things you leave behind when you choose a new life.

The urge is always with me to retouch yesterday's canvas with today's paintbrush and cover the things that fill me with regret.

I am not a hero in soul and never will be, but I am better than I was before. Or so I tell myself; and for now that is enough.

With every fragment of rock that fall from me, I can hear the voice of Marianne Engle. I love you. Aishiteru. Ego amo te. Ti amo. Eg elska pig. Ich liebe dich. It is moving across time, coming to me in every language of the world, and it sounds like pure love.

Everything burns if the flame is hot enough. The world is nothing but a crucible.

Coincidentally, a good age for a Japanese girl is younger than twenty five, because that's when she turns into a 'Christmas Cake'. Christmas cakes, as everyone knows, are desirable before the twenty fifth but afterward quickly become stale and are put on the shelf.