Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.

One day you will learn that love does not always betray you.

And of course the word love has many shades of meaning, as do many, many of the words in our living, breathing language

Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.

Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.

There had to be a reason why they were not going to marry. They had both been so adamant about it. What the devil was the reason?