No matter how bad things looked, Gramps had always seemed a giant to me. He wasn’t made up of any monstrous parts.

There are too many ghosts walking this earth. They weigh heavy on the living.

Many men spend their lives living in the wrong corner of their souls, mainly out of fear of what they might find on the other side.

What more can anyone take from me?” said my father, his head bent down. “Everywhere I go I carry my hell with me.

It’s the fricking reality that destroys plans.

I got through so much ink in the learning that the inkseller took to knocking at least once a week on the garden door. He had a gray solemn face that looked as if it was chiseled out of stone; he was stooped down like the letter C, as if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world in his wooden barrel of ink. Maybe he did. I have learned that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be.

Una volta, in tempo di guerra, quando ero un soldato dell’Esercito Imperiale, vidi la Morte camminare. Portava sul teschio una corona avvizzita fatta di ossa e biancospino fresco attorcigliato, e alle sue spalle si stringevano gli spettri dei miei commilitoni di recente strappati, ancora giovani, alla vita.

This emotion called love. It is wrapped up in time, measured by years. The more I see of humans the more complicated love becomes. It is not an exchange of goods. It has no price. it is not a simple connection to other beings. Love is much deeper, its tendrils reach into the bad and the good in humans. I don’t believe we should give up on this project. I cannot return until I learn how to love.

The floor had become a sea and the bed a ship, seen from a great distance. I could hear their voices calling me from far away. It lasted a minute or less. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I did not. It was an image that came to haunt me, and I have often wondered what would have happened if I had done as I was told and left the silver shoes alone. Would everything then have been alright?

If my soul was filled with anything, then it was dust and the ashes of possibilities.