Tao of the Day

[burgunder]

Talking about old times was a most terrible thing to do. All the lost things, lost chances, all the dead people. The town with no road to it anymore. She had to say ten times, "He's dead now," "No, she's dead." What a strange thing to say, after all! You couldn't be dead. You couldn't be anything but alive. If you weren't alive, you weren't - you had been. You shouldn't have to say "He's dead now," as if it was just some other way of being, but "He isn't now," or "He was." Keep the past in the past tense. And the present in the present, where it belongs.
- Ursula K. LeGuin, Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand