“A night of exhilaration, of boredom and terror, in which the merest of sounds took on other forms - grew large in the expanse of darkness. After several hours the sheep gradually stopped calling to each other from accross the river banks, and a brittle quiet descended. I desperately wanted to walk down to the water's edge. To see the black river in the moonlight. But a mixture of reason and fear kept me locked along the safe paths high above.”

“… the river sliding along its banks, darker now than the sky descending a last time to scatter its diamonds into these black waters that contain the day that passed, the night to come. — Excerpt from the poem “The Mercy”

“On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us”

“Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.”

“Below the mill the rivers merge. First they flow close beside each other, undecided, overawed by their longed-for intimacy, and then they fall into each other and get lost in one another. The river that flows out of this melting pot by the mill is no longer either the White or the Black, but it is powerful and effortlessly drives the mill wheel that grinds the grain for bread.Primeval lies on both the White and Black rivers and also on the third one, formed out of their mutual desire. The river arising from their confluence below the mill is called The River, and it flows on calm and contented.”

“I carry it all with me, in the quiet pools and strong currents of my being. I fill my hands with the black dirt left by the river's birth. I believe that what I hold in my hands is memory: like the river, it takes what it touches, carrying it along until all that remains is the bed over which the water flows.”