This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love. A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.

Everyone just wasting time because they have so much of it to waste, minutes slipping by on who's with who and did you hear.

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn't it?

I’m sorry for everything.” Then he turns and pushes back into the woods, and he’s gone.

Po flickered. "Thank you?" it repeated. "What is that?" Liesl thought. "It means, You were wonderful," she said. "It means, I couldn't have done it without you.

There are no happy endings, only breaks in the regular action.