How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension?

It is always the teacher who must learn the most... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.

How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension?

All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived.

Rock is much more malleable than ideas.

The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring -- that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage.

There was nothing for it but to pace through just behind or ahead of the spooling present that was never there, caught in the nonexistent interval between the nonexistent past and the nonexistent future.