“...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.”

“Nothing-to-see is what most of the universe consists of.”

“[...]all men are writers, journalists scribbling within their skulls the narrative of what they see and hear[...]”

“What is magic?Then there is the witches' explanation, which comes in two forms, depending on the age of the witch. Older witches hardly put words to it at all, but may suspect in their hearts that the universe really doesn't know what the hell is going on and consists of a zillion trillion billion possibilities, and could become any one of them if a trained mind rigid with quantum certainty was inserted into the crack and twisted; that, if you really had to make someone's hat explode, all you needed to do was twist into that universe where a large number of hat molecules all decide at the same time to bounce off in different directions.Younger witches, on the other hand, talk about it all the time and believe it involves crystals, mystic forces, and dancing about without yer drawers on. Everyone may be right, all at the same time. That's the thing about quantum.”

“Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.”

“I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.”

“Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.”