# Leben

"Our eyes met and locked as the song came to a halt, followed by a screaming conclusion from the crowd, girls around us pressing me into the stage, forcing all the air out of my lungs, but I’d forgotten about doing anything so basic as breathing."

"(2) goes like this that the one part is up to this time goes bright and it's a day and in other it's night. Just thinking on this, it's not so simple... It's not the magic, everything has gone and can't be changed, just thinking on this everything is devastated..."

"Otherwise the silence in the room was profound, the silence of places Brian had not yet been: gazing at the lifeless body of a beloved, the echo of a lost illusion, the tinnitus of betrayal."

"No pleasure philosophy no sensuality no place nor power no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purpose."

"While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born."

"I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever. Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty."

"And the fact was that he remembered once thinking that he was fine with dying anywhere at any time… but now, gazing at each corpse in turn, he thought with all his heart, I’m glad I didn’t die there. I have to go home. I’ve still got things to do."

"I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community."