“Strange things have been spoken, why does your heart speak strangely? The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror.”

“Whether or not the fame of Gilgamesh of Uruk had reached the Aegean – and the idea is attractive – there can be no doubt that it was as great as that of any other hero. In time his name became so much a household word that jokes and forgeries were fathered onto it, as in a popular fraud that survives on eighth-century B.C. tablets which perhaps themselves copy an older text. This is a letter supposed to be written by Gilgamesh to some other king, with commands that he should send improbable quantities of livestock and metals, along with gold and precious stones for an amulet for Enkidu, which would weigh no less that thirty pounds. The joke must have been well received, for it survives in four copies, all from Sultantepe.”

“The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of his life is sorrow.”

“Four are the tributaries of the great river. Four are the harvests from floodseason to dust. Four are the great treasures: timbalin, myrrh, lapis, and jungissa. Four bands of color mark the face of the Dreaming Moon. Red for blood. White for seed. Yellow for ichor. Black for bile.”

“We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us– we all dream.”

“So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it –– we all get to dream.”

“If you don't have a dream, it simply means you are still asleep.”