“The whole place seemed wrapped in isolated autumn silence.”

“Then, with the barricades complete, the posts assigned, the muskets loaded, the lookouts placed, alone in these fearful streets in which there were now no pedestrians, surrounded by these dumb, and seemingly dead houses, which throbbed with no human motion, wrapped in the deepening shadows of the twilight, which was beginning to fall, in the midst of this obscurity and silence, through which they felt the advance of something inexpressibly tragic and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, tranquil, they waited.”

“Like many isolated people, they were wrapped up in themselves and not too interested in the world outside.”

“Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.”

“...it begins with isolation - demons always inhabit desolate places...”

“Timbuktu. The last pure place. Isolation being the mother of purity. All men are jealous of Timbuktu because Timbuktu is removed from men, it's the wholeness men have fractured, the sacred extreme they've traded away.”