“We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.”

“Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons.”

“In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed. Our bodies knew each other so well we didn’t have to think about how to move. But when it was over and we lay still, I felt a terrible sadness come down because I loved him as much as I ever did.”

“I would have understood if they had killed him.”

“As she watched him she understood the quality of his beauty. How his labor had shaped him. How the wood he fashioned had fashioned him. Each plank he planed, each nail he drove, each thing he made molded him. Had left its stamp on him. Had given him his strength, his supple grace.”

“ Do you trust him? When had we reached the point where the answer to Rei's question had become yes without hesitation? When Zane had sat by my bedside for hours while I was drifting in and out of consciousness? When he had arranged for me to be visited by entertainers and friends, or had carried me home when I was too tired to walk? Or when I had first seen him cry and had wanted nothing but to comfort him? I do not know how, yet somehow, impossibly, we are here. ”