“What is it about beauty that intimidates; causing us to kneel somewhere deep inside and pray and wonder just how close we might crawl before being banished from the sanctuary?”

“How about some commotion, a stir caused by the spreading news of my imminent demise? If the world would just wince momentarily at my passing. No need for flags at half-mast, but just a flinch, a brief pause before everyone returns to the busy business of life.”

“What is it about a beautiful face that makes it beautiful?”

“Completely alive. I thought abut what she meant by that; about all the joy and wonder and passion that had slipped from her fingers.”

“Maybe what life needs is a good soundtrack, especially during the long stretches when nothing interesting is being said. A soundtrack might dignify things a bit, ennobling us with the proper drama and tension and pathos.”

“But to find it and touch it and hold it! What relief, if only briefly, until love wears off or slips through our hands. Strange how love--the most fickle of emotions--creates the illusion of permanence right from the start, just as beauty, so fleeting and elusive, can seem so timeless and infinite to behold.”

“From my bed I can see the moon tonight, so bright and ripe and salmon pink it looks as if it might drop from the sky. I imagine pirates on deck just before sunrise with the wood groaning and the moonlight streaking across the water in a straight line from the horizon. Did Caesar see the moon exactly so as he strode down the Roman Forum on the way to some debaucherous celebration? And what about Moses and Galileo and some wretched young Londoner pulling a cart full of corpses during the plague? or an American Indian crouched by a fire in a small clearing surrounded by huge primeval trees that glow orange from the flame?”