“This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight.”

“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”

“I want as much time in the darkness as I can possibly have. The darkness provides cover, the darkness provides places to hide and the darkness provides comfort. Darkness usually comes around dinner, but dinner would be too obvious.”

“He was tender with her. He wiped her eyelids with his handkerchief, not noticing how soiled it was. It was stained with ink, crumpled, stuck together. Her lids were large and tender and the handkerchief was stiff, not nearly soft enough. He moistened a corner in his mouth. He was painfully aware of the private softness of her skin, of how the eyes trembled beneath their coverings. He dried the tears with an affection, a particularity, that had never been exercised before. It was a demonstration of 'nature.' He was a birth-wet foal rising to his feet.”

“WAKE! for the sun, the shepherd of the sky,Has penned the stars within their fold on high,And, shaking darkness from his mighty limbs,Scatters the daylight from his burning eye.”

“Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”