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1 " A life was a secret thing, even between a husband and wife. Your secret life was completely your own, and because it was unknown, would never be mourned. The secret life of each individual went unhonored through eternity. "
― Steve Rasnic Tem , Deadfall Hotel
2 " We carry our fears with us wherever we go. We pack them neatly, holding them close because if we lost them, where would we be? "
3 " You can’t leave your fears behind,’ he’d say, ‘until first you live inside them. You have to live inside your house of fear. "
4 " Love the individual. Fear the group, "
5 " He would wake up crying, and wonder if there would come a time when the crying would stop, and he could not decide if that would be a good thing or not. And "
6 " Obviously. It seems to be in the nature of adulthood that we venerate the past, grieve its obsolescence, and even live there in the mind far more than could possibly be healthy. Perhaps our sympathy is because we feel life slipping away. The very young, on the other hand, appear to worship every new thing. "
7 " The strongest presence is so often an absence. "
8 " We cannot see all that is at stake, because all is at stake. "
9 " The world is full of horror. Our imaginations struggle to keep up. It would be a poor life without imagining. I’m not sure we can have any salvation, in fact, without imagining. "
10 " Belief is a wonderful thing and a terrible thing. And a frightening thing – because you cannot see into another person’s head and know with any assurance what he or she truly believes. "
11 " If you do not face the wolf sometime, it’s likely to circle around behind you. "
12 " You have to look at what scares you, Richard, if you don’t want it to control your life. "
13 " Intense grief made you both a believer and a skeptic. You believed you would see her again, when you least expected it, coming around some corner, or the one face you recognized in an anonymous crowd. You would not permit yourself to believe that death was the end. You were skeptical that she could have died in the first place, for how could such a terrible thing have happened to you? "
14 " But what I have seen among the world’s great religions has spoiled that illusion for me. They have convinced me that I will not be seeing any of my favorite people there, but simply more of those” – he gestured – “lifeless, judgmental types. "
15 " No one wants to be incidental; we struggle against irrelevance. But our days are short; for most of us, there is not enough time for more than a too-hasty stroke of the brush. "
16 " We shudder down all our days and nights, in hope of the one embrace that will take all this cold away. "
