How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.

Dave hung up. And unplugged the phone. With a fierce and bitter pain he stared at it, watching how, over and over again, it didn't ring.

You'd never killed anyone. Then you had.

But if you couldn't do everything, did that mean you did nothing?

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something.

most hated by the dark, for their name is light.