M.L. Stedman

He was a practical man: give him a sensitive technical instrument, and he could maintain it; something broken, and he could mend it, meditatively, efficiently. But confronted by his grieving wife, he felt useless.

And the stars: the sky gets crowded at night, and it is a bit like watching a clock, seeing the constellations slide across the sky. It__ comforting to know that they__l show up, however bad the day has been, however crook things get. That used to help in France. It put things into perspective__he stars had been around since before there were people. They just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that__ fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening. Summer, winter, storm, fine weather. People can rely on it.

Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.

I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...

It is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things ... I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount ... No ... we always have a choice. All of us.

You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it? " "I choose to," he said. "I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened...or I can forgive and forget... You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.

Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.

You have only to forgive once. To resent, you have to doit all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things" Frank to Hannah Roennfeldt

Life,_ thought Septimus, ... __ou could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.

If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasn__ safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back.

We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.

Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.

From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.

Scars are just another kind of memory.

This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.

The oceans never stop. They know no beginning or end. The wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island, to make a point which is lost on Tom.

Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.

It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.