...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing. - Margaret Atwood

We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

The shroud itself became a story almost instantly. 'Penelope's web', it was called; people used to say that of any task that remained mysteriously unfinished. I did not appreciate the term web. If the shroud was a web, then I was a spider. But I had not been attempting to catch men like flies: on the contrary, I'd merely been trying to avoid entanglement myself.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.