“Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them.”

“And even if one tried, it would be very hard to give a true account, for there were no thoughts in Ivan's mind but something very vague. He felt that he had lost his bearings.”

“You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.”

“Eventually the man comes to see that he has a mind, and that his mind is like a fist, wrapped tightly around a single thought. He cannot open the fist to look at the thought, for fear that it will fly away, but he knows that it is very important and that he must hang on to it, no matter what the cost.”

“He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds—that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.”

“He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. ”