“...if you do not plunder the past, the absence feeds on you”

“There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life.”

“A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something that feeds him more than water. There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart.”

“The jackal with one eye that looks back and one that regards the path you consider taking. In his jaws are pieces of the past he delivers to you, and when all of that time is fully discovered it will prove to have been already known.”

“In the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.”

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?”

“But we were interested in how our lives could mean something to the past. We sailed into the past.”