So we forgive each other?" The crooked smile climbs up one more time. "Again?" And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say. "Always," I say to him. "Every time.

Viola blows out a thoughtful air. "My dad used to say, 'There's only forward, Vi, only outward and up.'" "There's only forward," I repeat. "Outward and up," she says.

A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.

Never trust a politician, Todd. They have no fixed center, so you can never believe them.

Too much talking," I say. "Not enough running.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

But a knife ain't just a thing, is it? It's a choice, it's something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don't. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.