“They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.”

“Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.”

“A man is fit for neither business nor pleasure, who either cannot, or does not, command and direct his attention to the present object, and, in some degree, banish for that time all other objects from his thoughts.”

“It is, you must concede, unpleasantly messy, this business of having feelings, this mattering to each other. I've always thought of it as gory, a sort of perpetually occurring road accident - everyone going too fast, too close, without due care and attention, or with too much . . .”

“When you really thought about it crying was a rather bizarre thing for any creature to be capable of. What purpose did it serve other than revealing too much?”

“I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.”