All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed.

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.

Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?