Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.

But after a while, that too passes, and she and Jack go back to normal, as they have been before, which is to say that they, like all the other couples Kathryn has ever known, live in a state of gentle decline, of being infinitesimally, but not agonizingly, less than they were the day before.

I learned about opening moves and why it's important to control the center early on; the shortest distance between two points is straight down the middle.

God, life changes faster than you think.

old books -- little tombstones of ideas and history