“Two or three million years ago, the Earth was a ball of fire, revolving arround it's own axis. It took millions of years to cool under the constant downpour of rain. The Process was slow, imperceptible, but the gradual change - transition - came to pass. Same for generation after generation of evolution on Earth.Nature never jumps. She works in a leisurely manner, experimenting continuously. The same natural transition can be seen in man. This gradual change, transition, works every where, silently building storms and destroying soloar systems.”

“A tendency that’s run through your family for generations can stop with you. You’re a transition person – a link between past and future. And your own change can affect many, many lives downstream.”

“But it was not in Mr. Gruber's nature to look for reasons. That was why he was an ideal secretary. He had been given much fancier assignments in the past. Find out by six in the evening whether Hubermann played any Tschaikovsky after the first intermission of his concert in Brussels last year. Produce a narwhal tusk at least five feet long by eight o'clock Thursday morning. Buy, in your own name, the Domino Motion Picture Theater in Zurich. On Wednesday afternoon between five and six in the Café Meteor in Budapest, slap the face of a character known as Ervin Kugyec. A good secretary does not look for reasons but gets results.”

“Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.”

“Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.”

“Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse - so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years!”

“Legally, Moosbrugger's case could be summed up in-a sentence. Hewas one of those borderline cases in law and forensic medicineknown even to the layman as a case of diminished responsibility.These unfortunates typically suffer not only substandard healthbut also have a substandard disease, Nature has a peculiar prefer-ence for producing such people in droves. Natura non fecit saltus,she makes no jumps but prefers gradual transitions; even on thegrand scale she keeps the world in a transitional state between imbe-cility and sanity.”