“His eyes blazed at me, but it was the best kind of heat. He smiled, and for the first time in my life I believed that, for him, I could be more than I’d ever dreamed.”
“I wanted to wrap my bones around him and never let go.”
“Ash only had one tattoo on his body--the wizard he'd etched on himself. From whatever angle I looked, it seemed like its throat had been cut.”
“For the first time in my life, home was where my heart was, and I'd left my heart in Chicago.”
“You know you’re loudest when you don’t say anything at all?”
“The only sure way to fail forever is to give up.”
“I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
“...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.”
“Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn?
Mystery!
Because of all that cannot be known. And what if we did know? What if it were proved—absolutely and purely—that Lizzie Borden took an ax? That Oswald acted alone? That Judge Crater fell into Sicilian hands? Nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize.
The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It’s a standoff.
The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma. And so I lose sleep over mute facts and frayed ends and missing witnesses.
God knows I’ve tried.
Reams of data, miles of magnetic tape, but none of it satisfies even my own primitive appetite for answers. So I toss and turn. I eat pints of ice cream at two in the morning.
Would it help to announce the problem early on? To plead for understanding? To argue that solutions only demean the grandeur of human ignorance? To point out that absolute knowledge is absolute closure? To issue a reminder that death itself dissolves into uncertainty, and that out of such uncertainty arise great temples and tales of salvation?
I prowl and smoke cigarettes.
I review my notes.
The truth is at once simple and baffling: John Wade was a pro. He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture. No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on.”
“Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic.”
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