“For instance, supposing that the planet earth were not a sphere but a gigantic coffee table,how much difference in everyday life would that make? Granted, this is a prettyfarfetched example; you can't rearrange facts of life so freely. Still, picturing the planetearth, for convenience sake, as a gigantic coffee table does in fact help clear away theclutter—those practically pointless contingencies such as gravity and the internationaldateline and the equator, those nagging details that arise from the spherical view. I mean,for a guy leading a perfectly ordinary existence, how many times in the course of alifetime would the equator be a significant factor?”

“Those pointless equations, to which no solution exists, are called absurdities.”

“You cannot escape from life. Life is not a book. You can't just set it down on the coffee table and walk away from it when it gets boring or you get tired.”

“I met a man from Columbia who had a table for a back. I asked if it was a coffee table. He got offended and thought I was stereotyping him. How was I supposed to know it was a Three-drawer Wuchow Console Table?”

“How we take it for granted – those trivial conversations; those mundane moments that we think hold no meaning. We never realise how much we rely on the ordinariness of everyday life. When love is gone – when our entire world is gone – only then do we understand those moments are what we live for.”

“She took a sip of the coffee and then said, “Manna. Thank you, Sir.”“Now I really do know how to punish you.”She curled both hands around the mug. “You wouldn’t take away my coffee!”“Only if I feared for my life,” he said, carrying food to the table.”