“The river, it's banks as yet untamed wandered languidly through thickets of rush and papyrus. Ibises waded in the shallows; in the deeps hippos rose and sank slowly like pickled eggs.”

“We traveled for two weeks with a pickled hippo.”

“Look closer. The river's its own world of fast and slow, deep and shallow, bright and shadowed. If you look at it like that, like a landscape where the fish live, it'll be easier to catch one.”

“It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.”

“The tip of the burning red sun kissed the sky in the distance as it slowly sank like molasses into another time, its light pooling ahead, a deep, thick red that saturated the dark majestic hues of the night.”

“Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters”