“I couldn’t think. The basics of my life seemed altered and thrown into question.”

By not asking too much, you can believe in almost anything..like..a starry night in the mountains, or even the existence of fate.

I’m not who you think I am, I had said to T.J. the last time I’d seen him. Maybe I wasn’t who I’d thought I was either.

When people went on vacation, they shed their home skins, thought they could be a new person.

It was always the same ocean, but the waves made it fresh and new each time.

After all, our families–our ancestors–are our identities. Biology is destiny.

Summer-induced stupidity. That was the diagnosis.

I suddenly understood. Mom and I weren’t trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.

…Promises are more dangerous then secrets.

I watched the land for as long as I could, until it disappeared behind its shawl of mist.

Come find me,” Leo put in, his gaze full of understanding. “Whenever you want. I’ll be here.

And until I had it fixed in my mind – unchanged, mysterious and beautiful

My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean. None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Marine.

It struck me then how much the past – not just the past but history and family – was like the ocean tide.

The being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

He grinned. Busted. Im a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless and shockingly handsome alter ego. And im on top of it, she announced with witty triumph. Is that a freudian slip? His bluntness caught her off guard. A self-conscious blush rose in her face.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

You say that my way of thinking cannot be tolerated? What of it? The man who alters his way of thinking to suit othere is a fool.

Busted. I’m a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless-and shockingly handsome-alter ego.

My manner of thinking stems straight from my considered reflections; it holds with my existence, with the way I am made. It is not in my power to alter it; and were it, I’d not do so.

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

Though sympathy alone can’t alter facts, it can help to make them more bearable.