“They lay together in a sheltered place among the ruins of Brasilia while deathbeams from Chinese EMVs played like blue searchlights on broken ceramic walls.”

“In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.”

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

“... you "met" this Moneta ... or whatever her real name is ... in her past but your future ... in a meeting that's still to come”

“Tyrena did not laugh again but her smile slashed upward in a twist of green lips. Martin, Martin, Martin, she said, the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenbergs da...”

“In such seconds of decision entire futures are made.”

“We cannot achieve personal enlightenment a clarification of our souls until we cease deluding ourselves. We must accept that life includes witnessing and personally experiencing pain.”

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”

“Knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge.”

“[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”

“Love is honesty. Love is a mutual respect for one another.”

“The fact that Ridge has been honest in his conversations with me is not something he did wrong. The fact that he has feelings for me also isnt wrong, when you know exactly how much hes fought those...”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”