“My destiny doomed me to be in this desert land. I will map it.”

“We are an oasis in the desert, beautiful but doomed!”

“I keep a large map of the world hanging above my bed. Everybody wants to own land, but I want to own the oceans.”

“Come to the book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it and draw your own map.”

“Language is like looking at a map of somewhere. Love is living there and surviving on the land. ”

“All that was good in me thrilled in my heart at that moment, all that I hoped for in the profound, obscure meaning of my existence. Here was the endlessly mute placidity of nature, indifferent to the great city; here was the desert beneath these streets, around these streets, waiting for the city to die, to cover it with timeless sand once more. There came over me a terrifying sense of understanding about the meaning and the pathetic destiny of men. The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness. Then men seemed brave to me, and I was proud to be numbered among them. All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.”