Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

This search is my purpose; not because you chose it for me, Lord, but because I chose it for myself.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.

And whether or not your brain is impelled by the air that once impelled mine, through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different fo

Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

Some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions. So why did I do it? Because I had no choice.

Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.