For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

A birth is not really a beginning. Our lives at the start are not really our own but only the continuation of someone else's story.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

In this cruel world kindness should always be repaid.

Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.