“Knowledge is hot water on wool. It shrinks time and space.”

“Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.”

“Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.”

“In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time.”

“A waitress, bringing Finkler more hot water, interrupted Treslove's answer. Finkler always asked for more hot water no matter how much hot water had already been brought. It was his way of asserting power, Treslove thought. No doubt Nietzsche, too, ordered more hot water than he needed.”

“It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.”