What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.

It's only the body that's gone. Only the body. There's a part that doesn't go in the ground, a part that stays inside you forever.

Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him.

My father had put these things on the table. I looked at him standing by the sink. He was washing his hands, splashing water on his face. My mamma left us. My brother, too. And now my feckless, reckless uncle had as well. My pa stayed, though. My pa always stayed. I looked at him. And saw the sweat stains on his shirt. And his big, scarred hands. And his dirty, weary face. I remembered how, lying in my bed a few nights before, I had looked forward to showing him my uncle's money. To telling him I was leaving. And I was so ashamed.

But words are more powerful than anything.

Her grey eyes sparkled with passion as she spoke. Sid looked into them and for a second he glimpsed her soul. He saw what she was - fierce and brave. Upright. Impatient. And good. So good that she would sit covered in gore, shout at dangerous men, and keep a long, lonely vigil - all to save the likes of him. He realized she was a rare creature, as rare as a rose in winter.

Because I'm on the phone, Mom!" "Fooling around with your friends again! Who is that?" "Ahmadinejad." "Oh, my goodness! What is he saying?" "That he wants to see Jeezy at the Beacon tonight. Putin's going too. He scalped a ticket from Kim Jong Il. All tha gangstas are going." "Don't be so fresh, young man!" "Gotta go," he says to me. "Enemy forces have dropped a Momshell." "Fall back, solider. Over and out.