We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

And indeed, I am a warmhearted and thoroughly domestic man who gets up and makes pancakes for his children and kisses them on the head when he sends them off to their day.

On a fading summer evening, late in the last hours of his old life, Peter Jaxon-son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon, First Family; descendent of Terrence Jaxon, signatory of the One Law; great-great-nephew of the one known as Auntie, Last of the First; Peter of Souls, the Man of Days and the One Who Stood-took his position on the catwalk above Main Gate, waiting to kill his brother.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.

So perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.