Then the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding him.

A good river is nature's life work in song.

Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.

When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.

We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings.

La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.

That's what the left is always doing. They have an ideal, and they want people to conform to it. When people don't conform to it, they end up being beaten into the mold. And beaten sometimes hard enough so that if they don't fit, then they kill them. That's what happened in the Soviet Union and China.