Happiness is a myth, Karla once said. It was invented to make us buy things.

concatenate

‘Okay! We go now!’ the porter rumbled and roared in a voice that he’d found in a bear’s cave, and cured in the barrel of a rusted cannon.

perennial.

I’ve never known a human source more brilliant than their tortured smiles.

Every human heartbeat, he’d said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he’d meant. He’d been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I’d always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the

‘So, that’s it,’ he concluded. ‘The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards. The rest of us, all six billion of us, do pretty much what we are told!’

exasperation.

trepidation,