The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar.

The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.

Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.

It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement.

...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls.

No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.