“You and those shot-glass eyes, deep swirling pools of 80-proof firewater, with the depth and profundity of Saturn’s spinning pulsars…”

“When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.”

“All I'm saying is: if there's a pool and people are in the pool and you're not in the pool, you want to be in the pool just like those people in the pool. It's just a fact of nature.”

“Somewhere, deep down him, he was scared, he was born scared. And those who are born with fear are natural slaves, whose profund instint leads to dread, with poisonous fear, all of those who suddenly can possibly cut loose the slave colar around their necks.”

“Because Ali did not want to see the deep pools of his kind teacher's eyes and fall into them. He didn't know how to swim.”

“You go ahead. I'd rather not be shot out of a tube into a pool filled with a bunch of nine-year-olds' urine.”