“Gray vines coiled leftward in this northern hemisphere, what winds them shapes the dogwhelk's shell.”

“Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire!”

“Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.”

“TV sounds are all the same; there's no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island.”

“What shell did not feel the sound waves and which bird did not face at least once the wind?”

“But she could not reduce her vision to words, since it was no single shape coloured upon the dark, but rather a general excitement, an atmosphere, which, when she tried to visualize it, took form as a wind scouring the flanks of the northern hills and flashing light upon cornfields and pools.”