No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.

A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

After love, no one is what they were before.

I wonder sometimes what the memory of God looks like. Is it a palace of infinite rooms, a chest of many jeweled objects, a long, lonely landscape where each tree recalls an eon, each pebble the life of a man? Where do I live, in the memory of God?

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.