Extracts

"I know what you're thinking, but don't give up on me just yet. Just wait 'til I've told my whole story. And keep your eyes open. Nothing is as it seems... You finally hit bottom and you know who you are, because you can't go any lower. When you find... a friendship that you wouldn't have found anywhere else. Still and all, there's a kind of intimacy with those that can go the distance. Sometimes you see the world so clearly... and you know just what to do, and just when to do it. Just what you should've done, and when you should've done it." - The Salton Sea

"I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end... because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was, when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going... because they were holding on to something." - The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers