“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty.
They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices.
Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and
flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years
Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?
And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed.
They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly,
very nearly, human.”