“There are too many confusing things present. Things I know. Thoughts I have. Sarcasm. Things I think I ought to be doing and places I ought to be going. Always other places.”

“I think long and carefully about what novels ought to do. They should clarify the roles that have become obscured; they ought to identify those things in the past that are useful and those things that are not; and they ought to give nourishment.”

“The only thing I can be sure of at any given time is what I am thinking myself. I have no idea what the others are thinking. Do they think space is big and dangerous? I do. What do they believe in? I think nobody ought to be alone. That one should be with someone. With friends. With the person one loves. I think it is important to love. I think it's the most important thing.”

“I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

“But, for a little while, this is the place for us -- a good place too--a place of good omen, a place of beginning things--and of ending things I never thought would end.”

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”