Today was the end of freedom. High school had fallen behind; college loomed ahead. Tomorrow he traded freedom and Arizona for Colorado and discipline.

There was no fear of sandpaper earth, no sense of danger from a bare-skinned spill, for the boy was a child—a six-foot, one-inch growing child who knew nothing of accident, injury, dismemberment, death—who would study those lessons tomorrow, thank you, but not today. Today, it would be sufficient to be wild and free.

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

He maintains his innocence, so there is nothing I can say by way of mitigation.

The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine.