“And so, in the space of a few yards, the sacred springs of Gafsa, those laughing, chattering, amorous waters of the Romans that well up here in a river of warmth and purity, had been reduced to those of a Cloaca Maxima.”

“In a pine tree,A few yards away from my window sill,A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,On a branch.I laugh, as I see him abandon himselfTo entire delight, for he knows as well as I doThat the branch will not break.”

“Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.”

“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.”

“The Grace Hotel in Sukhumvit had been a magnet for tarts, double-bent cops, single-trippers, sub-orbital space cadets and those spring-necked noddies who spent their waking hours peering into the dark side of the spoon.”

“Those whom spring's storms torture yearn for the warmth of summer Without even fearing the ideaThat a hundred days of their lives will then have passed forever.”