“As we passed under a streetlamp I noticed, beside my own bobbing shadow, another great, leaping grotesquerie that had an uncanny suggestion of the frog world about it . . . judging from the shadow, it was soaring higher and more gaily than myself.'Very well,' you will say, 'Why didn’t you turn around. That would be the scientific thing to do.'But let me tell you it is not done ― not on an empty road at midnight.”

“If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.”

“Great minds have always seen it. That is why man has survived his journey this long. When we fail to wish any longer to be otherwise than what we are, we will have ceased to evolve. Evolution has to be lived forward. I say this as one who has stood above the bones of much that has vanished, and at midnight has examined his own face.”

“Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea.”

“I am what I am and cannot be otherwise because of the shadows.”

“It was the world of the abyss, supposedly as lifeless as the earth’s first midnight.”

“We have joined the caravan, you might say, at a certain point; we will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in a lifetime see all that we would like to see or learn all that we hunger to know.”