The world, Kieran thought, is cruel. But it was the people in it who made it filthy.

Oscar squeezed his hand softly. 'Do we really need to know? Can we truly know? Perhaps this whirlwind we call our lives is too big and too vast to be known by our small minds? Perhaps our purpose is not to know, but to be okay with that, to be comfortable with not knowing, and still have the courage to love

A man is only ever himself when he has let go of the follies of being a man, and sobriety is that steel door separating man from his true conception.

The thought would not leave him. How God, if there were such a dictator, could allow the cruel to inherit the earth and poison the cups of the innocents, was lost on him.