In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

The cooler days have brought a wistful mood upon him. The smell of coalsmoke in the air at night. Old times, dead years. For him such memories are bitter ones.

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him.

Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire.

Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

He can give me what you cannot. Death is not a lover. Oh yes, he is.