Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose-- What is gone is gone.

He had never missed God or the hope of heaven, but he had dearly wanted confession to rest his mind, Communion to let him touch something beyond Father Krone's dry, shaky hand, and holy water to taste like starlight.

Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.

She said, "I will go no farther." "There is no choice. We can only go on." The magician said again. "We can only go on.

No," he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king's voice... whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give.

You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.

The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart.