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.

There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell

And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

What is it about childhood that never lets you go, even when you're so wrecked it's hard to believe you ever were a child?

I shot you, all right," he said, "and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know it yet. I gained something, too." What?" I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind.

Holding on to things only breaks your heart.

Hello, Edward. I've been waiting for you.