“I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever.Take down the walls.”

“All of you, wherever you are: in your spiny cities, or your one-bump towns. Find it, the hard stuff, thelinks of metal and chink, the fragments of stone filling your stomach. And pull, and pull, and pull.I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever.Take down the walls.”

“I folded my arms. “I don’t usually do stakeouts.”“I thought it might be a nice change of pace for you. All that knocking down of doors and burning down of buildings must get tiring.”“I don’t always knock down doors,” I said. “Sometimes it’s a wall.”

“Me: "Touch the cave wall."Computer: "You touch the cave wall. It is moist."Isaac: "Lick the cave wall."Computer: "I do not understand. Repeat?"Me: "Hump the moist cave wall."Computer: "You attempt to jump. You hit your head."Isaac: "Not jump. HUMP."Computer: "I don't understand."Isaac: "Dude, I've been alone in the dark in this cave for weeks and I need some relief. HUMP THE CAVE WALL."Computer: "You attempt to ju-"Me: "Thrust pelvis against the cave wall."Computer: "I do not-"Isaac: "Make sweet love to the cave."Computer: "I do not-”

“Because you are never herebut always there, I forgetnot you but what you look likeYou drift down the streetin the rain, your facedissolving, changing shape, the coloursrunning togetherMy walls absorbyou, breathe you forthagain, you resumeyourself, I do not recognize youYou rest on the bedwatching me watchingyou, we will never knoweach other any betterthan we do now”

“Once he had watched Liz making a silk braid. One end was pinned to the wall and on each finger of her raised hands she was spinning loops of thread, her fingers flying so fast he couldn’t see how it worked. ‘Slow down,’ he said, ‘so I can see how you do it,’ but she’d laughed and said, ‘I can’t slow down, if I stopped to think how I was doing it I couldn’t do it at all.”