This world is full of broken things: broken hearts, broken promises, broken people.

Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being.

. . . For a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven. And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again.

There are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity. They live in pain, and exist only to visit that pain on others. A random glance, the momentary lingering of a look, is enough to give them the excuse that they seek. Sometimes, it is better to keep your eyes on the gutter for the fear that, by looking up, you might catch a glimpse of them, black shapes against the sun, and be blinded forever.

You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.

The US dollar is our currency but your problem.

It was an overcast late November morning, the grass splintered by hoarfrost, and winter grinning through the gaps in the clouds like a bad clown peering through the curtains before the show begins.