“Don’t you have a class this morning, Georgie?”Day mumbled something that sounded like“Ancient History of the Near East and Greece.”“Poof!” scoffed Everhart, flourishing his fork,“Come with me and see the Near East.”

“Don’t tell me about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to meabout eternal California summer.It’s enough to havea few days nakedamong three hundred kinds of rain.”

“Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana.”

“If you plunder from west to east you are great like Alexander. if you do the same from east to west you are a barbarian like Chengiz.”

“Don Severo dropped his fork, Doña Remedios nearly chocked, but Jesús carried on playing with his food. He’d never really liked broccoli.”

“beyond the east of the sunrise,beyond the west of the sea, and the east and west, the wander thirst.that will not let me be.”