“They had no curiousity about him at all. As if they knew all that they needed to know. They stood and watched him pass and watched him vanish upon that landscape solely because he was passing. Solely because he would vanish.”

“She watched him recede into the past as he stood...each successive moment of him passing before her eyes and being lost forever.”

“When Will Graham could open his right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was- an intensive-care unit. He knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would pass. That's what it was there for.”

“Because watching him love Tiger Lily was better than not watching him at all.”

“Not watching the path where his legs took him, he walked on because he knew he had to walk ahead, leaving his past behind.”

“The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.”