“It is not required that we know all of the details about every stretch of the river. Indeed, were we to know, it would not be an adventure, and I wonder if there would be much point in the journey.”

“The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.”

“For how much longer will we have the strength to tear ourselves away from everyday life and resist? How often will life give us the chance to play hooky? To thumb our noises at it? Or make our little honorarium on the side? When will we lose one another and in what way will the ties be stretched beyond repair? How much longer until we become too old?And I know we were all aware of this. I know what we're like.We're too shy to talk about it, but at that precise moment on our journey, we knew.”

“Prediction requires knowing about technologies that will be discovered in the future, but that very knowledge would almost automatically allow us to start developing those technologies right away. Ergo we do not know what we will know.”

“And then I met the most wonderful boy in the world. We would take long walks by the river. We spent hours gazing into each others eyes. We were so very much in love. And then one day, he went away. And I thought I'd die, but I didn't. And when I didn't, I said to myself... is that all there is to love?”

“And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.”