“The earth itself was unchangeable, the endless tracts of sand and water and pavement. It was the people, the perturbable madmen who roamed its surface, who viewed the world as transient and broken. Everett wished the earth could somehow reach up and still them, the crazy people, and invest them with its silence and permanence and depth.”

“She had read about people-where? she could not remember this either- who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to not be yet of the earth, suspeded still between two worlds.”

“So it's not all that important who people really are. Honestly, you could end up spending your life with almost anyone, and it wouldn't matter who - because the person they are to you is totally dependent on your view of them.”

“...it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself... it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saving. Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay.”

“The Earth is deep, and right to the heart it's alive. We people only live on the top, like the bugs that live on the scum of the still water near the shore.”

“People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; it's no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green.”