“The past is like a great stone that lies on the bed of a river, hidden from view but shaping the currents of the water as it flows by. You cannot read the currents in the river of your own life, and navigate them safely, if you do not understand what causes them. You must know your past, for it will shape your future.”

“A true friend is someone who understand your past, believes in your future, and accept you just the way you are.”

“Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.”

“I just want to make a point that it's not just great teachers that sometimes shape your life. Sometimes it's the absence of great teachers that shapes your life and being ignored can be just as good for a person as being lauded.”

“Do you know where the past and the present intersect?" Jac asked him."Where?""In your mind, only. It's the only point. Otherwise, the past is further away than the furthest galaxy. We know it, intuitively, because we understand the irrevocability of past action, and sometimes that makes us sad." He looked into Gordius's face, trying to read his expression, but the fellow wouldn't make eye-contact with him. "But it ought not to make us sad. Another name for that irrevocable gap between past and present is -- freedom.”

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”

“I believe in going with the flow. I don't believe in fighting against the flow. You ride on your river and you go with the tides and the flow. But it has to be your river, not someone else's. Everyone has their own river, and you don't need to swim,float,sail on their's, but you need to be in your own river and you need to go with it. And I don't believe in fighting the wind. You go and you fly with your wind. Let everyone else catch their own gusts of wind and let them fly with their own gusts of wind, and you go and you fly with yours.”