“This time was different. The tools of this era--phones, computers--enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace.”

“Dor came from a time before the written word, a timewhen if you wished to speak with someone, you walked to see them. This time was different. The tools ofthis era—phones, computers—enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all theyaccomplished, they were never at peace. They constantly checked their devices to see what time it was—the very thing Dor had tried to determine once with a stick, a stone, and a shadow.”

“people were just out of control! . . . They've all got cell phones stuck to their ears and yet I've never seen such distance between people trying so hard to be close.”

“So computers are tools of the devil?" thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn't him.”

“Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.”

“Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.”