“When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.”

“There. My ears are all dead. Now you try."Three times I repeated the movements she'd made. Slowly, carefully, but nothing left me with the impression that my ears had died. The wine was rapidly circulating through my system."I do believe that my ears aren't dying properly, " I said, disappointed.She shook her head. "That's okay. If your ears don't need to die, there's nothing wrong with them not dying.”

“When all around is dark, there is nothing to do but to wait until the eye accustomed to the dark”

“It's the same as a hereditary disease, weakness. No matter how much you understand it, there's nothing you can do to cure yourself. It's not going to go away with a clap of the hand. It just keeps getting worse and worse”

“People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.”

“If the boat they were riding in was plunging over the falls upside down, there was nothing to do but fall with it. Tebngo could struggle all he wanted to at this point, and it would do nothing to change the flow of the river.”

“I don't think jealousy has much of a connection with real, objective conditions. Like if you're fortunate you're not jealous, but if life hasn't blessed you, you are jealous. Jealousy doesn't work that way. It's more like a tumor secretly growing inside us that gets bigger and bigger, beyond all reason. Even if you find out it's there, there's nothing you can do to stop it.”