I heard the hiss and felt the blessed numbness spreading. If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller. - Dan Simmons

I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead.

Sarai had treasured every stage of Rachel’s childhood, enjoying the day-to-day normalcy of things; a normalcy which she quietly accepted as the best of life. She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and the triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things—the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossing and connections casual, dialogues imminently (sic) forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.

If there is a true secret to the universe, it is this...these first few seconds of warmth and entry and complete acceptance by one’s beloved.