“I'd been deeply affected by my contact with the miners, not only because of their kindness, but because they'd taken this potentially hellish place and made it, if not heaven, at least human; through their simple rituals of eating, drinking tea, smoking tobacco, praying, playing, and talking, they'd created civilization in one of the most impossible places to imagine it. And what seemed like a miracle to me was, to them, just another day at work!”

“Camels can go many weeks without drinking anything at all. The notion that they cache water in their humps is pure myth—their humps are made of fat, and water is stored in their body tissues. While other mammals draw water from bloodstreams when faced with dehydration, leading to death by volume shock, camels tap the water in their tissues, keeping their blood volume stable. Though this reduces the camel’s bulk, they can lose up to a third of their body weight with no ill effects, which they can replace astonishingly quickly, as they are able to drink up to forty gallons in a single watering.” (pp.69-70)”

“In order to slip from beneath the crushing weight of future thoughts, I adopted a technique of focusing solely on the moment I was living. In itself, removed from the time line that stretched forward and backward from the present, no single moment was that bad.”

“You travel faster alone, but farther together.”

“Anyone could say that a miracle is something impossible, but they say it thoughtlessly, mindlessly, because most people have such weak imaginations they couldn’t possibly understand what they’re saying when they say that a miracle is something impossible. Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it’s something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.”

“For what purpose have you prayed?""For thanks. If I must die, at least I have lived. If my companions have perished, at least I have known them. If the world is cruel, at least I have tasted kindness. I had to cross to the far side of the sky to taste it but, as you say, the world is full of miracles.”

“I never traded my humanity for my long life, Doctor. I've always remembered my roots....You worked so hard to be like your Elder master that you've forgotten what it is like to feel human - to be human. And we humans...have the capacity to feel another creature's pain. It is what lifted humani above the Elders, it is what made them great.”