[b]Neil Gaiman
There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don’t knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don’t.[/b]
Okay, but where are they now?
Because, said Thor, when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.
It still does.
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There’s not a chance you’d mistake one for another, after a minute’s close inspection), but still unique.
I’ll start with “I”, you start with “we”; until, eventually, you and I both get to “them”.
She smiled again. Do you like cats? she said.
Yes, said Richard. I quite like cats.
Anaesthesia looked relieved. Thigh? she asked, or breast?
You know, the Big Cats.
They were having an argument as old and comfortable as an armchair, the kind of argument that no one ever really wins or loses but which can go on forever, if both parties are willing.
Oh, we’re willing all right.
Songs remain. They last…A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That’s the power of songs.
Trust me: Not all of them.