“If self is a location, so is love:Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points,Options, obstinacies, dug heels, and distance,Here and there and now and then, a stance.”

“The four cardinal points are three: South and North.”

“There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.”

“Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.”

“In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

“The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky.”