the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.

Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

Consider the word “time.” We use so many phrases with it. Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time. In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time. A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time. There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting. Then Dor began. And everything changed.

The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.

We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us. The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.

Love- the infatuation kind- 'he's so handsome, she's so beautiful'- that can shrivel. As soon as something goes wrong, that kind of love can fly out the window.