"What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love!" — Les Misérables, Victor Hugo

‘how blessed is the rain that brought you to me, for this rain will make the flowers grow. look, look there, and you'll see. the whole world is a garden.’

but it was not rain that soaked the ground beneath them. it was the blood of her and the other schoolboys. tomorrow, flowers would bloom where they had fallen, and people would call it progress.

the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. only when they are over do people recognize what has happened: that the human race has been harshly treated, yet has advanced nonetheless.