“He would have been horribly compelled to feel this Earth not as the bottom of a universe but as a ball spinning, and rolling onwards, both at delirious speed, and not through emptiness but through some densely inhabited and intricately structured medium.”

“I've tucked and tried to roll after that first spread-eagle spin but soon discovered the universal truth that bowling-ball-shaped objects bounce downhill much faster than do mannequin-shaped objects. In my current predicament, speed, obviously, was not my friend.”

“I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent.”

“Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it towards some overwhelming question”

“The Earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides, is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.”

“Strange- the barometer is falling, but there's no wind yet, just silence. Up there above, where we can't hear it, it's already begun, the storm. The rainclouds are racing along at full speed. There aren't many of them yet- scattered serrated fragments. It's as though some city had fallen up there and now the pieces of the walls and towers are flying down, the heaps of them grow with horrible rapidity before your eyes, and they come closer and closer, but still have days to fly through blue emptiness before they crash down here to the bottom, with us.”