Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.

You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.

I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.

No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.