"At any moment."
"We have hoped you would remain. [..] I think of you, Kerbouchard. The way you take is filled with risk."
"Are there other ways?"
"For some, even for you, perhaps. You are a strange man, Kerbouchard. You are an adventurer yet a scholar."
"There have been many such, even Alexander, and Julius Caesar. I but dabble in scholarship. Learning to me is a way of life. I do not learn to obtain position or reputation. I want only to know."
"Is not yours the best way? To learn because one loves learning?"
"There are places I have not seen, Valaba. I would feel their suns upon my face, the brine of their seas upon my lips. There are too many horizions, and too many dreams of what may lie beyond those horizons."
"What are you seeking, Kerbouchard?"
"Must one seek something? I seek to be seeking, as I learn to be learning. Each book is an adventure as is each day's horizon."
"What of love, Kerbouchard? Did you love Aziza?"
"Who is to say? What is love? Perhaps for a time I loved her; perhaps in a way I love her still. Perhaps when a man has held a woman in his arms, there is a little of her with him forever. Who is to say?
"A ruined castle, an ancient garden, a moon rising over a fountain . . . love comes easily at such a time. Perhaps we loved each other then; perhaps we do not love each other now, but we each have a memory.
"Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to fragments, or love can be a thing that endures, a rich deep current that flows unending down the years.
"I do not think one should demand that love be forever. Perhaps it is better that it not be forever. How can one answer for more than the moment? Who knows what strange tides may sweep us away? What depths there may be or twists and turns and shallows? Each life sails a separate course, although sometimes, and this is the best of times, two lives may move together until the end of time?
"Listen to the music out there. Is the song less beautiful because it has an end? I believe each of us wishes to find the song that does not end, but for me that time is not now.
"You see?" I spread wide my hands. "I have nothing. I have no home, no land, no position. I am an empty gourd that must fill itself.
"I would owe no depts to destiny, Valaba, nor could I exist on the bounty of another. I am not a lapdog to be kept by a woman. I do not know what awaits me out there beyond the rim of things, but destiny calls, and I must go. For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality."
—Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum
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