The future had suddenly become unknowable: anything could happen: the train of my life had jumped the rails and headed off across the fields and coming down the lane with me, then.

All that I did," she said, "everything I tried to do. All for nothing." Nothing is done entirely for nothing, said the fox of dreams. Nothing is wasted. You are older, and you have made decisions, and you are not the fox you were yesterday. Take what you have learned, and move on.

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last.

And did I pass?" The face of the old woman on my right was unreadable in the gathering dusk. On my left the younger woman said, "You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.

Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people.

Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.