“She had originally agreed to appear naked, but on seeing the cars informed me that she would only appear topless—an interesting logic was at work there.”

“One looks forward to the day when the General Theory of Relativity and the Principia will outsell the Kama Sutra in back-street bookshops.”

“Her chief dread in life, at this period of her development, was that she would appear narrow minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she should be so.”

“The long triangular grooves on the car had been formed within the death of an unknown creature, its vanished identity abstracted in terms of the geometry of this vehicle. How much more mysterious would be our own deaths, and those of the famous and powerful?”

“Yet she felt an impostor, and already the mask had begun to bite into her face.”

“As Miriam released my hand I felt that she and Midwife Bell had returned to a more primitive world, where men never intruded and even their role in conception was unknown. Here the chain of life was mother to daughter, daughter to mother. Fathers and sons belonged in the shadows with the dogs and livestock, like the retriever growling at Midwife Bell's unfamiliar car from the window of my neighbours' living room.”

“Sometime in the near future, I pray that my faith can surpass the physical reality that appears in front of me and beyond me.”