Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone.

None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Crokus muttered, 'if only to put him out of our misery.

It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.

You’re loitering, citizen.” “Actually, I was hesitating.

Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck of course.