“On the hill opposite, Joachim tolled the midday bell, announcing lunch to the workers in the fields. Klaus listened a moment, then said, "I thought it would be a bleaker scene."Dietrich turned to him, "What would be?""This day. I thought it would be marked by terrible signs - lowering clouds, ominous winds, a crack of thunder. Twilight. Yet, it is so ordinary a morning that I grow frightened.""Only now frightened.""Ja. Portents would mean a Divine Mover, however mysterious His moves; and the wrath of an angry God may be turned away by prayer and penance. But it simply happened. Everard grew sick and fell down. There were no signs; so it may be a natural thing, as you have always said. And against nature, we have no recourse.”

“Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgement," Dietrich answered, "so one finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds.”

“The trees around and overhead were so thick that it was always dry inside and on Sunday morning I lay there with Jonas, listening to his stories. All cat stories start with the statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this," and I lay with my head close to Jonas and listened. There was no change coming, I thought here, only spring; I was wrong to be so frightened. The days would get warmer, and Uncle Julian would sit in the sun, and Constance would laugh when she worked in the garden, and it would always be the same. Jonas went on and on ("And then we sang! And then we sang!") and the leaves moved overhead and it would always be the same.”

“Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.”

“But what is hope? When all else is lost, it is the one thing you may keep.”

“She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. “Our friend is behind us again and he’s coming up fast. Closing the distance.”Then he knows we’re on to him.”Christ! He’s got a gun, Red! He’s stuck his arm out the window.”Don’t worry,” Red told her. “Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he’d be lucky to hit that mountain.”There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console.Unless,” Red continued thoughtfully, “that’s Orvid Crayle behind us. He’s very good.”

“Since then, I've had these little periods when everything seems okay. I had another one last night, which I guess is why I'm writing you about this now. It's not that I don't understand that life has to continue, and it's not that I thought that there would never be a point when I could laugh easily or simply have a good time again. But these feelings don't last and they still seem unnatural to me. Not when I have them - at that point, they seem amazingly natural - but afterward. If you and I were going through this together, I'm sure we would talk about that a lot. I'd like to believe we would help each other out, that we would get through this together.”