History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

I play until my fingertips are raw. Until I rip a nail and bleed on the strings. Until my hands hurt so bad I forget my heart does.

Turn away. From the darkness, the madness, the pain. Open your eyes and look at the light.

It's another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent and hot...It's the eighth deadly sin. The one God left out, Hope.

Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

For the first time in a long time, he didn't think of the past. And of all the things he'd lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.