“I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.”

“The place smelled like Sam -- or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very ... erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.”

“I wondered what sort of man - or woman, perhaps? - had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them.”

“He'd somehow lived a detached life, more Like a spectator than a participant in his own existence.”

“...to many of us prayer is more like talking to a chocolate pudding than participating in an amazing relationship with a living being.”

“Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence all things that might lift them out of resentment-filled illusions of security. -Alma Mavis Taraza”