“In the infinite permutation of an ice crystal, everything repeats itself, but, really, from another point of view, nothing repeats itself.”

“In the infinite permutations of an ice crystal, everything repeats itself, but, really, from another point of view, nothing repeats itself. The arms go out, forming dendrites, sectored plates, the same angle every time, but the final product – because of wind, because of molecular vibration, because of rate of growth and temperature – is never the same.”

“Studying ice crystals as a graduate student, he eventually found the basic design (equilateral, equiangled hexagon) so icily repeated, so unerringly conforming, that he couldn't help but shudder: Beneath the splendor--the filigreed blossoms, the microscopic stars--was a ghastly inevitability; crystals could not escape their embedded blueprints any more than humans could. Everything hewed to a rigidity of pattern, the certainty of death.”

“Draw the darkness ... and it will point out the light which has been in the paper all the while. Inside this world is folded another." from "Afterworld.”

“had felt time settle over itself, imbricate and fix into place the vertigo of future aligning with the present.”

“We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.”

“A torrent of language, a spring off the near-infinite stream of confessions he had harbored half his life, all of hers.”