Walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heartbreak. Trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. The entertainment business. What voyeurs we have all become.

Some travelers think they want to go to foreign places but are dismayed when the places turn out actually to be foreign.

It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

Time is not a thing that passes ... it's a sea on which you float.

for me the novel is a social vehicle, it reflects society.

Axiom: you are a sea. Your eye- lids curve over chaos My hands where they touch you, create small inhabited islands soon you will be all earth: a known land, a country.

Happy as a clam, is what my mother says for happy. I am happy as a clam: hard-shelled, firmly closed.