When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.

James often wondered at the chain of flukes it must have taken to bring him through with his own life and limbs intact. Once he might have believed it to be the work of Providence but it seemed to him now that to thank God for his life would be to suggest God had shrugged off all the others flicked them away like cigarette butts by the thousands and that seemed like abominable conceit. James Dorsey took no credit for being alive. His higher power these days was Chance.

Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?... Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that?

When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

Soon, everything else would come rushing at him. Like the ground to a falling man, it would come rushing up and hit him all at once - the place, the company, her words; one implication would lead to another and shatter him - but around that intake of breath the world hung silent and bright, so bright, and Akiva only knew this one thing, and held on to it and wanted to live inside of it and stay there forever. Karou was alive.

Head held high, she stepped toward the block and sank to her knees, and it was then that Akiva started to scream. His voice soared over the pandemonium - a scream to scour the souls of all gathered, a sound to drive ghosts from their nests.