There's a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It's not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey.

Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.

And when pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentors what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos.

Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.

Few things worth having can be got easily.

There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.

something in me had got broken, but not so broken I didn't remember what it was.