To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

Locked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.

The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will

Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.

I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me. I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.

Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom means that nothing is trying to kill you every day.

I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.