... you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can't last.

For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are.

Truly, he thought, the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.

Or was it the elaborate trick of an old lady convincing herself that she had a past? After all, once a time was over, it was done. You were always in the present. She may have been a girl once, but was not now. Her childhood was gone and nothing could fetch it back.

And I was wrong. Kits should be precious to all Clans. After we have taken these three back to WindClan, I will ask Ivystar to suggest an addition to the warrior code: that kits should be protected by every cat in the forest, regardless of which Clan they come from. All our futures depend on them.

The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.
And he knew what it was that had leaped upon him to stay and would not run away now.
I'm alive, he thought.