I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.

She's the Queen Bitch of Castle Hell. If you mess with her, she'll eat you alive.

At the end of almost every AA meeting, someone read the Promises. One of these was 'We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it'. Dan thought he would always regret the past, but he had quit trying to shut the door. Why bother, when it would just come open again? The fucking had no latch, let alone a lock.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.

So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.