“We stand a professional distance apart, as if I cant feel his pain screaming in my head. Mine amplifies his; they share a joint soundthat of glass breakinguntil they swell to a crescendo that deafens.”

“More than most, I know the pain of surviving.”

“What you said about the sweetest pain? That fits us.”

“So I make no effort to hide my pain. I dont ever put it all on display like thisbut for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will bemagni...”

“. . . and I dont expect him to suborn his life into mine any more than I would change my dreams for him. Were not one soul, one being, however much we love each other.”

“For I need this scar over my heart to remind me. Crazy as it sounds, if I can bear the wound on my body, it lessens what I must carry on my soul. How he knew that about me, I cannot fathom.”

“The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing--unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls ...”

“I dont have cookie-cutter relationships, Rumi. Women arent iPhone apps that I download and discard!”

“In advising the heads of state to learn from tragedy rather than perpetuate its existence Robert Kennedy excalimed, "Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." ...”