“The Maker was a genius, he thought. Infinity resulted in insolence. But transience was the way one treasured what one had been given.”

“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?Making life means makingtrouble. There’s only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things.”

“Was that what Nell had done, too? Forsaken the life and the family she'd been given, to focus instead on the one she'd been without.”

“They had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the strivings."A Fire Upon the Deep”

“And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

“No one ought to expect to see much good resulting from his labors in word, and doctrine, if he is not much given to prayer and meditation.”