“I am just the biologist; I dont require any of this to have a deeper meaning. I am aware that all of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. If I dont have real answers, it is...”

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”

“It was a test of a fragile trust. It was a test of our curiosity and fascination, which walked side by side with our fear. A test of whether we preferred to be ignorant or unsafe.”

“I didnt answer her. All I could have said was I dont know, a sentence that was becoming a kind of witness to our own ignorance or incompetence. Or both.”

“I looked not for shooting stars but for fixed ones, and I would try to imagine what kind of life lived in those celestial tidal pools so far from us.”

“Has there always been someone like me to bury the bodies, to have regrets, to carry on after everyone else was dead?”

“When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for t...”

“You know Balbec so well - do you have friends in the area?'I have friends wherever there are companies of trees, wounded but not vanquished, which huddle together with touching obstinacy to implore...”

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying youre friends is easy. Being friends is not.”