If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist.

I frightened myself. I became the ghost Piper was so scared of.

Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.

At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an Idea. Another person. An idea of a person.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

It was not a big smile, not particularly bold or polite or ironic or glib, not asking for anything or offering anything, not stringy or careless, not, in short, like any smile I had ever experienced before. But such a smile! You could burn a hole in the world with that smile.

I give thanks for all that has passed, for all that is passing, and for all that is yet to come.