“The territory through which we passed had been overbuilt in the days over the Secular Ancients, but only a few traces of that exuberant time remained, and a whole forest had grown up since then, maple and birch and pine, its woody roots no doubt entwined with artifacts from the Efflorescence of Oil and with the bones of the artifacts' owners. What is the modern world, Julian once asked, but a vast Cemetery, reclaimed by nature? Every step we took reverberated in the skulls of our ancestors, and I felt as if there were centuries rather than soil beneath my feet.”

“If ants had a language they would, no doubt, call their anthill an artifact and describe the brick wall in its neighborhood as a natural object. Nature in fact would be for them all that was not 'ant-made'.”

“We spend our lives hurrying away from the real, as though it were deadly to us. 'It must be up there somewhere on the horizon,' we think. And all the time it is in the soil, right beneath our feet.”

“Maybe it's true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil.”

“What is it my dear?"Ah, how can we bear it?"Bear what?"This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?"We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world."And every day we shall have less. And then none."Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

“For every field planted and grown, for every tree rekindled from their rotting root beds, comes that ancient instinct, that hunger for acceptance, for love, for allegiance. It is a poison greater than any we had sown into the earth.”