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1 " I am not gone but merely walk within you. "
― Nicholas Evans , The Smoke Jumper
2 " No man may earn his heart's desire, lest first he brave the smoke and fire "
3 " The important things in life never happened by accident. But even with those things that were meant to be, sometimes you had to wait awhile and then maybe give them a little nudge. "
4 " The important things in life always happened by accident. At fifteen she didn’t know much, in fact, with each passing year she was a lot less clear about most things. But this much she did know. You could worry yourself sick trying to be a better person, spend a thousand sleepless nights figuring out how to live clean and decent and honest, you could make a plan and bolt it in place, kneel by your bed every night and swear to God you’d stick to it, hell, you could go to church and promise properly. You could cross your heart seven times with your eyes tight shut, cut your thumb and squeeze it and pen solemn vows on a rock with your own blood then throw it in the river at the stroke of midnight. And then, out of the black beyond, like a hawk on a rat, some nameless catastrophe would swoop into your life and turn everything upside down and inside out forever. "
5 " They drove south with the night falling soft and blue around them. Away to their right the Front Range stood out against the last red ribbon of the dying day like ramparts of some dread empire. Through the open windows came the smell of cooling earth and sage long baked by the sun. "
6 " Guilt could be as simple as that. There didn't have to be anything maudlin or self-pitying about it. It was a fact and you lived with the consequences, a kind of contract under which your actions led to inevitable obligations. "