“She flutters a hand and historybreathes—innocence returns,sin ripens on the tree of knowledge,death comes to be.”

“Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?""Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world.”

“Not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree.”

“Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.”

“Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.”

“Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.”