And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.

Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.” “Makes

That means we don’t exist in one place. Instead, everything we do is left in … like a trail out there, a big ring of decisions. Every action we take — ” “And mistake.” He nodded and dabbed at his forehead with his sleeve. “And every mistake. But every good thing we do as well. They are immortal, every single touch we leave behind. Even if nobody sees them or remembers them, that doesn’t matter. That trail will always be what happened, what we did, every choice. The past lives on forever. There’s no changing it.” “Makes you not want to fuck up,” Juliette said, thinking on all the times she had, wondering if this box between them was one more mistake. She saw images of herself in a great loop of space: fighting with her father, losing a lover, going out to clean, a great spiral of hurts like a journey down the stairs with a bleeding foot. And the stains would never wash out. That’s what Lukas was saying. She would always have hurt her father. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar. Always have had gotten friends killed. Always have had a brother die and a mother take her own life. Always have had taken that damn job as sheriff. There was no going back. Apologies weren’t welds; they were just an admission that something had been broken. Often between two people. “You okay?” Lukas asked. “Ready to go on?” But she knew he was asking more than if her arm was tired. He had this ability to spot her secret worries. He had a keen vision that allowed him to glimpse the smallest pinprick of hurt through heavy clouds. “I’m fine,” she lied. And she searched her past for some noble deed, for a bloodless tread, for any touch on the world that had left it a brighter place. But when she had been sent to clean, she had refused. Always have had refused. She had turned her back and walked off, and there was no chance of going back and doing it any other way.

Our actions, you know? They last forever. Whatever we do, it’ll always be what we did. There’s no taking them back.

Fingerprints are like values — you leave them all over everything you do

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said.

'Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.' (p145)

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences of what we do or say, are immortal; and that no calculus has yet pretended to ascertain the law of proportion between cause and effect. The hammer of an English blacksmith, smiting down an insolent official, led to a rebellion which came near being a revolution. The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The echoes of the greatest deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among the cliffs, and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be rent by the explosion.

Each day and every deed’s eternal, little boy. Live them in such a way that you can bear to live with them eternally.

And history`s fingers never relax their grip, never leave us unmolested, can touch us even when we would never imagine their presence.

How imperishable are all the impressions that ever vibrate one's life! We cannot forget anything. Memories may escape the action of will, may sleep a long time, but when stirred by the right influence, though that influence be light as a shadow, they flash into full stature and life with everything in place.