A lifetime is not enough to write of all the world's splendor, or all the myriad faces of human life. A lifetime is not enough to write of the world's splendor: the cooking smoke rising through the morning mist, the hurried footsteps beneath neon lights, the mottled traces left by the passage of time, and the play of light and shadow deep in people's hearts. A thousand scenes and ten thousand feelings are all hidden in this world of mortals. How could a single sentence express all the helplessness and heartache? The words caught in a trembling throat, the frustration of being unable to do what you wish, the loneliness of drinking alone late at night, the regret of giving your all and still falling short. Only those who have lived through such buried pain can truly understand it. There are so many sides to life, so many stories that could never fit on a few short pages: the gray hairs at a parent's temples, the tenderness in a lover's eyes, the shoulder a friend offers to lean on, the kindness of a stranger. Little moments of warmth thread through the long river of time. Even a thousand lines of writing cannot fully express their depth and ardor.
