“The abyss above him shone with unflickering stars. One of the dots of light was Earth. He didn’t know which one.”

“And it didn’t matter how many songs or poems had already been written about them, because whenever he thought about the girl, the stars shone brighter. As if she were the one keeping them illuminated.”

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.”

“The night was crisp and the stars shone with a cold blue light like loneliness or infinity.”

“With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the blood-curdling blackness of the window. Through it shone the stars! Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world.”

“And he told stories about the stars above, about the earth below. He told them to make the night pass, and also because his heart was all reflections in which the soul of the world moved.”