Lucky

No problem. People deserve second chances. And third chances. All people do is make mistakes. If we never forgave, we’d all be alone.

The lottery is the greatest con of all time, kiddo. Proves our government is just like us, tricking people into thinking any dream can come true.

The world’s like that. What matters in one moment, it doesn’t matter the next. Things that fall apart eventually come back together again. Everything passes. You can be sure of that.

Second chances, third, fourth. If we never forgave, we’d all be alone,

The world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Something stirred inside her that felt like hope — the kind of hope a lottery ticket held just before you checked its numbers.

Unfortunately the heart doesn’t often give a shit what the mind has to say to it.

That was the beauty of it. That, right there, was the grift itself: that moment of hope, that quickening of pulse, the what if, what if it’s me, what if it’s my ticket, what would I do with all that money, who would I become?

She had read enough books about heroes and villains to know which side they were on.

Lucky would see mothers and daughters out in the world and understand that not always, but sometimes and really quite often, a mother was a soft, safe, beautiful thing. She didn’t have that. And she ached for it.

There were things about him she didn’t know, but she would learn them all.

But not how to grift; that, I had to research. The world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. —Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata” February 1982 NEW YORK CITY Someone had left a baby outside the nunnery.