“Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing.”

“We froze. Neither of us moving, simply staring at each other, wondering if the other was going to move first. "You are," he whispered, "uncommonly stirring." He closed his eyes then, as if he had to in order to break the bond between us, then lifted me to the saddle and stared at the ground as he guided my feet into the stirrups.”

“The escalator seems to me to typify this: It leads us up, by climbing on our behalf. Yes, it doesn't even climb, it flies. Each step carries its shopper aloft, as though afraid he might change his mind. It takes us up to merchandise we might not have bothered to climb an ordinary flight of steps for.”

“For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.”

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

“We were not making love, we did not even kiss, but the inexplicable intimacy we shared left us wordlessly and hopelessly locked into each other's gaze.”