Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.

Manufactured--synthetic--even virtual, if that is what you turned out to be--I would love you.

If there is no god, what is left but science? What is left to endow us with any grace? You can tell me the chemical makeup of my skin and my brain, but how can you explain away my soul? And if there is no god to watch over me, chastise me, grieve for me, rejoice for me, make me fear, and make me wonder, what am I but a collection of metals and liquids with nothing to celebrate about my daily living?

And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me." It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed. Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.

I was Amazement--I was Desire--I was Ecstasy and Rapture and the slightest bit of Greed.

He is so kind that he makes me search my soul to find new ways to be compassionate to others.

Yet the world is the same as it always was. It is merely that you see it with new eyes.