But how can you have a sense of wonder if you're prepared for everything?

Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.

Life Stories: Why hunger for these? One, it fits a hunger. Maybe it is more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge of the life, no matter who lived it...

It was true, I took too much for granted; I trusted fate, back then.

It's a gamble every time you get up in the morning.

History (that list of ballooning wishes, flukes, bent times, plunges and mistakes clutched like parachutes) is rolling itself up in your head at one end unrolling at the other.

The answer can only be that God has given Adam free will, and therefore Adam may do things that God Himself cannot anticipate in advance.

I am a believer in sensible choices, so different from many of my own. Also in sensible names for children.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, as used to be said; though in present day, the idea of God laughing is next door to blasphemy. An ultra-serious fellow, God is now.

How easy it is to invent humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation.

Her life began to seem long. Her adrenalin was running out. Soon she would be thirty, and all she could see ahead was more of the same.

I believe in effort, but not in unnecessary effort: Aunt Vidala was most likely negotiating her exit from this world all on her own.