“We will now sing forth, hymn 405, 'Oh God, what on earth is my hairdo all about?”

“Oh! lovely voices of the skyWhich hymned the Saviour's birth,Are ye not singing still on high,Ye that sang, "Peace on earth"?”

“Oh, yes, we'll be in chains, and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great grief, we will arise once more into joy, without which it's not possible for man to live, or for God to be, for God gives joy, it's his prerogative, a great one...Lord, let man dissolve in prayer! How would I be there underground without God? Rakitin's lying: if God is driven from the earth, we'll meet him underground! It's impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for a non-convict! And then from the depths of the earth, we, the men underground, will start singing a tragic hymn to God, in who there is joy! Hail to God and his joy! I love him!”

“The earth has disappeared beneath my feet, It fled from all my ecstasy. Now like a singing air creature I feel the rose keep opening.”

“Siva asking about my past? Were we going to sing campfire songs and hold hands now? Sloane”

“Now, I'm as appreciative as the next obsessive-compulsive recovering-academic of the vast riches of material becoming available online, thanks to all those Google scanners crouched in the basements of libraries around the world, madly feeding books through their machines. I download obscure tomes onto my iPad and give thanks to the dual gods Gates and Jobs, singing hymns to all the lesser pantheon of geniuses.But there's nothing like a book.”