“For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.”

“Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.”

“I was alive. But I was alive without a memory, without a name; I was cut off from hope as well as from remorse or regret. I had no past and would probably have no future; I was buried alive in a void which was the wound that had been dealt me. I was like the wound itself.”

“Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.”

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”

“Death was a leech; no matter which side of the spectrum you were on, either dead or alive, it fed. It either acquired your soul or devoured all your joyful emotions.”