Vaddey Ratner

I said nothing. Deep inside of me, my voice screamed from a hole where I had buried it

I thought maybe we mourned not only for the dead but also for the living. We felt their absence before we knew for sure they were gone.

Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking.

He supposes in this way he's learned to pray not as one might to the gods but as one does by simply pausing every now and then to think of others.

words, you see," he said, looking at me again, "allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient.Turn a world filled with injustice and hurt into a place that is beautiful and lyrical.

Love hides in all sorts of places, in the most sorrowful corner of your heart, in the darkest and most hopeless situation

A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naivete-that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity.