The man was hit in one eye by a stone, and that eye turned inward so that it looked into his mind, and he died of what he saw there

I would be mute, beautiful, changless as the earth for you. I would be your memory, without age, always innocent, always waiting in the King's white house. I would do that for you and no other man inthe relm. But it would be a lie and I will do anything but lie to you - I swear that.

Imagination is best fed by reality, an odd diet for something nonexistent there are few details of daily life and its broad range of emotional context that can't be transformed into food for the imagination.

...that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.

It’s an odd thing, happiness. Some people take happiness from gold. Or black pearls. And some of us, far more fortunate, take their happiness from periwinkles.

But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.

Wisdom never learned silence, and it is most annoying when least wanted.