Atlas isn't carrying the world on his shoulders, no giant muscular hulk with a sense of responsibility; the world is balanced on a pyramid of clowns, and they are always tooting horns and wobbling and goosing each other.

Evil itself may be relentless. I will grant you that, but love is relentless too. Friendship is a relentless force. Family is a relentless force. Faith is relentless force. The human spirit is relentless, and the human heart outlasts - and can defeat - even the most relentless force of all, which is time.

Atlas isn't carrying the world on his shoulders, no giant muscular hulk with a sense of responsibility; the world is balanced on a pyramid of clowns, and they are always tooting horns and wobbling and goosing each other.

here in the summer desert, winter found my blood

Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.

It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.

In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.