It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.

The thief you must fear the most is not the one who steals mere things.

There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?