“He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust”

“Either that boy is the sanest creature on Earth, he thought, or he is so disturbed that our tests cannot even begin to scratch the surface.”

“To what shall we compare our fragile life?Life is like a speck of dust that alights upon a surface. It remains there, unmoved, until a draft threatens it. When a breeze comes it holds on till the last. Finally, a gust of wind comes and it is blown asunder. That is how fragile life is, like a speck of dust blown to nothingness.”

“Skin was earth; it was soil. I could see, even on my own skin, the joined trapezoids of dust specks God had wetted and stuck with his spit the morning he made Adam from dirt. Now, all these generations later, we people could still see on our skin the inherited prints of the dust specks of Eden.”

“There was a water-drop, it joined the sea,A speck of dust, it was fused with earth;what of your entering and leaving this world?A fly appeared, and disappeared.”

“Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current.”