Do You Know What It Means To

It's An Awful Truth That Suffering Can Deepen Us, Give A Greater Lustre To Our Colours, A Richer Resonance To Our Words.

Like All Strong People, She Suffered Always A Measure Of Loneliness; She Was A Marginal Outsider, A Secret Infidel Of A Certain Sort.

The Spirit Who Inhabits Her Animates Us All. Destroy The Host, You Destroy The Power. The Young Die First; The Old Wither Slowly; The Eldest Perhaps Would Go Last. But She Is The Queen Of The Damned, And The Damned Can't Live Without Her.

There Are Too Many Other Inexplicable Things Around Us--horrors, Threats, Mysteries That Draw You In And Then Inevitably Disenchant You. Back To The Predictable And Humdrum. The Prince Is Never Going To Come, Everybody Knows That; And Maybe Sleeping Beauty's Dead.

A Summer Rain Had Left The Night Clean And Sparkling With Drops Of Water. I Leaned Against The End Pillar Of The Gallery, My Head Touching The Soft Tendrils Of A Jasmine Which Grew There In A Constant Battle With A Wisteria, And I Thought Of What Lay Before Me Throughout The World And Throughout Time, And Resolved To Go About It Delicately And Reverently, Learning That From Each Thing Which Would Take Me Best To Another.