The Mapping of Love and Death

. . . if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.

The truth always finds a way, Maisie, in some manner or form. You cannot deliberately change the course of the river without causing a flood or drought somewhere else.

... the vacuum left by the departing visitor seemed to echo along the hallway and into the walls. It was at those times, when her aloneness took on a darker hue, that she almost wished there would be no more guess, for then there would be no chasm of emptiness for her to negotiate when they were gone.

spring will come, the soil will seed itself, that flood or drought will abate, and life goes on in that new landscape.

...you should know that all maps are drawn in hindsight. And hindsight, if interpreted with care, is what brings us wisdom.

Extremes live within us all. The joy of association resides alongside the anticipation of loss. What is given will be taken, what we have is often only of value to us when it is gone.

People who do not have the resources of character to draw upon are easy prey for the trickster—and they become lesser tricksters themselves.

Maurice Blanche rested his glass on the trolley, then looked at his hands, turning them over, frowning and smiling in equal measure. 'They say the face tells all there is to know about a life, but I personally believe much can be deduced from the hands. There are lines and scars, bumps and calluses; indeed, the hands are both the sketch and the final work of art.' Maisie looked at her hands. She had always been somewhat embarrassed by them. They were hands that told a story of hard manual labour when she was a child, hands that had scrubbed floors, had polished heavy oaken furniture. Later, they had soothed the sick, and had rested on the foreheads of the dying. She realised that she had no recollection of her hands as a schoolgirl, uncomfortable with the conversation's direction.

he believed that it is a weak country that does not take care of its own,

The wounds of the past could always be camouflaged. Erasing them to extinguish all trace was the greater challenge.

When you are sitting in silence, you open the door to a deeper wisdom--the knowing of the ages. When you are walking, with the path to that wisdom already carved anew by your daily practice, you find that an idea, a thought, a notion, comes to you, and you have the solution to a problem that seemed insoluble.