People are only mean when they are threatened.

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.

But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.

How could he find perfection in such an average day? Then I realized this was the whole point.

If we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love, and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of ‘I could have, I should have’. We can sleep in a storm. And when its time, our goodbyes will be complete.

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.