“For the truth is ... that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. They hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. They desert the fallen.”

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

“For the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

“Once you fall, Septimus repeated to himself, human nature is on you. Holmes and Bradshaw are on you. They scour the desert. They fly screaming into the wilderness. The rack and the thumbscrew are applied. Human nature is remorseless.”

“No one in this desert, neither he nor his guest, mattered. And yet, outside this desert neither of them, Daru knew, could have really lived.”

“Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a desert plain. For us, there is a passion in the midst of that expanse. The knower who reaches there will prostrate, there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' in that place.”