Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on.

You see, until then I'd been driven. I'd had a true quest, a purpose beyond my function - and then suddenly, the quest was over. I felt... drained. Disappointed. Let down.Does that make sense? I had been sure that as soon as I had everything back I'd feel good. But inside I felt worse than when I stared.

You can't run away from home without destroying somebody's world.

So life isn't exciting?" continued Gary. "Great. Give me boredom. At least I know where I'm going to eat and sleep tonight. I'll still have a job on Monday. Yeah?" He turned and looked at Richard.Richard nodded, hesitantly. "Yeah.

I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who /I/ was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what /was/ me? And what was watchig?

It's easy, there's a trick to it, you do it or you die.

Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams.

Life is a stream: an ongoing conversation of nature with itself, contradictory and opinionated and dangerous. And the stream is made up of births and deaths, of things that come into existence and pass away. But there is always life, and things feeding on life.