Three or four times only in my youth did I glimpse the Joyous Isles, before they were lost to fogs, depressions, cold fronts, ill winds, and contrary tides... I mistook them for adulthood. Assuming they were a fixed feature in my life's voyage, I neglected to record their latitude, their longitude, their approach. Young ruddy fool. What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

I've become a less brave traveller since I became a dad, but in the past I was more foolhardy than brave.

The song instantly insisted it'd never existed.

In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

Human beings need to watch out for reasonless niceness too. It's never reasonless and its reason's not usually nice.

What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.

I really wish they hadn't made the set out of asbestos.