I didn't want to see you." "They told me." "I was afraid that I'd still love you." "I hoped that you would.

For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.

But I fear that I also underestimate the stupidity of the rest of mankind. Are we absolutely sure that we ought to win this war?

You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knos waht warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure youo didn't know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It's waht you were born for.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief. Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music? How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.