“The world, like a great iris of an even more gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to encompass everything, stared back at him.”

“Eyes as black and as shiny as chips of obsidian stared back into his. They were eyes like black holes, letting nothing out, not even information.”

“He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances.”

“They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.”

“The world is a giant eye, staring back at the stars. When it tires, it closes its lids--just as I am doing now--and gives way to dreams, which is why the night is so much more mysterious than the day.”

“...a truly great person has a profound curiosity about the world and the people in it, an interest that encompasses everything and everyone. Real curiosity, I now know, doesn't leave much room for judgement.”