Strangers in Time

by David Baldacci

You never really knew what you were capable of, Molly believed, until the moment came to be capable of it.

How a single madman could do so much damage to the world, Oliver thought. God was indeed testing them all.

a life’s worth of collected objects,

“I am living my dream by being here with you, my dear.”

“Dreams are never in context, are they? That’s the point of dreams, of reaching for something so impossible, so impractical, often something so undeserved, that the act of wishing for it defines more about us than the actual dream does.”

To dream is often to deceive oneself. We may dream so often about another sort of life that we forget to live the one that we already possess.”

Humans make poor gods. We’re just not up to it.

“War is never the answer, Ignatius,” she said. “Never.”

But when you have loved someone as much as I loved Imogen, and then you lose that person?” He shrugged, his expression one of the saddest she had ever witnessed. “I think the one thing you try to do, above all, is to keep that person alive in your thoughts and words. You… you want to make sure that the person resides with you at all times. So…”

She knew there was a price to be paid with important relationships like that. They were wonderful, but they also had the capacity to exact a punishing price when one in the relationship was gone.

Grief, sadness, anger at a loss, and terrible, unrelenting hurt were the costs to be paid for loving and being loved. It felt completely worth the bargain right up until the very moment payment was demanded.

We all need someone at certain times in our lives. It makes the inevitable pain lessened and the periods of happiness exalted.