“Coming home seemed to have started the healing process. No longer vivid and garish, the memories seemed to be covered in gossemer, fading behind a curtain of time and forgiveness.”

“He was glad some of the pain was fading, had already faded so much since the first year. But it seemed more to be a trade off: with the pain went details and memories. People had said, ‘Time heals,’ but he realized time didn’t heal, time just eroded and confused, and he didn’t think that was the same thing at all.”

“It all seemed to him to have disappeared as if behind a curtain at a theater. There are such curtains that drop in life. God is moving on to the next act.”

“Memory is a great deceiver, grief and longing cloud the past, and recollections, even vivid ones, fade.”

“You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to the weddings of the people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.”

“Being always transcends appearance-that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter.”