“After You Left the weight of your absence became a black hole revolving around my memory of you--itself a black hole. Wavelets wrinkled the sheer sheet of space and time. Father, the loss of you is a planet orbiting what might have been. I cannot say if the emptiness is a grand celestial body or a vacuum so complete nothing can escape. I know these forces have mass and motion that bends, calls in, ripples fabric-- distorts the pace of light for a billion years.”

“Most of us are safe. If you're not a delirious dream the gods are having, if your beauty doesn't trouble the constellations, nobody's going to cast a spell on you.”

“Nightmares are a great source of inspiration.”

“Of course,” she said, “Your Majesty.” I admired the way she could make the words sound so much like “You Idiot.”

“Don’t I know by now that folk see their sins in the way they choose? There’s always a reason as to why selfishness is not really selfish and crimes are honest and waiting safely by while somefolk else is killed is really the more courageous choice.”

“For it is our most secret desire that governs and dominates all. If your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover, deep down in all things, the silent overpowering victory of that which you love.”

“The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.”

“Snowplows kill twice as many Canadians as grizzly bears do.”