Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.

He may be dead; or he may be teaching English.

The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.

Your god must once have stood at a dawn of infinite possibilities, and this is what he's made of it. You tell me that I want God's love? I don't. Perhaps I want forgiveness, but there's no-one to ask it of. And there's no going back, there's no setting things right, there's only the hope of nothingness.

What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.

He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.