“...proving once again that there was no escape from recurrence.”

“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”

“A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.”

“He knew that his father had finally run hard enough and long enough to wear down the frontiers between the worlds, he had run clear out of his skin and into the arms of his wife, to whom he had proved, once and for all, the superiority of his love. Some migrants are happy to depart.”

“The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.”

“Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force. ”

“Keep away from her," said Ameer Merchant, but once the inexorable dynamic of the mythic has been set in motion, you might as well try and keep bees from honey, crooks from money, politicians from babies, philosophers from maybes. Vina had her hooks in me, and the consequence was the story of my life.”