Live life as if today is your last day living. :-)

You can never know about about your own destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part on your oun destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs?

There is a dualism inherent in democracy--opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.

Beneath the skin, there is fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing for power. All of this. We are joined. It is as if we live in the center of a great storm. Around us the world of the realms revolves like a giant kaleidoscope, images refracted again and again. So many worlds! So much to know.

Because you can't keep up the illusion forever," I say. "No one has that much magic.

The Corporation would like to apologize for the preceding pages. Of course, it's not all right for girls to behave this way. Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she’d just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box.