That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same.

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

Before you save anyone else, you have to save yourself. otherwise, you'rejust a bundle of tics, a stringed puppet manipulated by the chance and the insensible wind.

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad.