Emily, there are enemies everywhere. We have to be on our guard, especially for the next couple of weeks._ Theo sighed unhappily. __his is going to be the longest fortnight of my life._ __hat__ saying something,_ I joked, __iven how long you__e lived._ __xactly,_ he said, without smiling.

Velva wasn__ merely a rose among the thorns, the lily of the valleys, she was Empress amongst the stars and planet.

My mother used to say not sleeping was the sign of a guilty mind. It could have been. There was a lot in my mind to feel guilty about. When you__e drunk and trying to sleep, your thoughts are visited by the ghosts of those deeds whose heat still glows hottest in your personal darkness. Our actions burn much longer than the moments in which they occur. And drunks like me, we hide from the glow of the embers by fueling other fires and hiding within the flames.

The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is that they are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep, or when they want to sleep.

That's what I'm trying to do; it's like counting stars, only so much prettier.

We do not know what it's like to be a bat, we do not know what it's like to be in coma. we can't even say that we know what it's like to be sleeping. We can say what it's like to be restored to consciousness after sleeping. If there are no dreams during our sleep then the sleeping life is an empty life. We might say of such a life that it's not like being anything. We protect that life on the assumption that come the morning its normal functions will be restored. Suppose it was the case however that such functions were only restored every two days... every eight days... twice a year but only briefly. I assume the point is clear. Actions that end life are irretrievable. If we are mistaken at that point there is no going back.