- "He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact."
- "They were given a new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior."
- "She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why...You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead."
- "I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?"
- "Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."
- "Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do you own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."
nov 23 2011 ∞
nov 23 2011 +