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.

Take me with you. For laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.

All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry. By being ourselves, squirrel and raven, we fulfill the first requirement, you in flight and I in my tree. But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain—this is nothing beside a life without poetry.

- and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact.

Avicenna California...Museum of my twisted youth, vault of my dearest and most disgusting memories.

As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.

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