“When a group of people get up from a table, the table doesn’tknow which way any of them will go.”

“That evening, getting up from the table, she had crossed the invisible boundary beyond which things start working by themselves.”

“Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.”“Yeah,” said the voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.”

“This is what I like, sitting at a table and watching people go by. It does something to your outlook on life. The Anglo-Saxons make a great mistake not staring at people from a sidewalk table.”

“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.”

“It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong, but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table.”