# Quote — John Crowley, Little, Big

> Just as a lamp waved in darkness creates a figure of light in the air, which remains for as long as the lamp repeats its motion exactly, so the universe retains its shape by repetition: the universe is Time's body. And how will we perceive this body? And how operate on it? Not by the means we perceive extension, relation, color, form — the qualities of Space. … No: but by the means we perceive duration and repetition and change: by Memory.

- Author: [John Crowley](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley.md)
- Book: [Little, Big](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley/little-big.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Crowley#Little,_Big:_or,_The_Fairies'_Parliament_(1981)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley/little-big/just-as-a-lamp

## More from this book

> Daily Alice awoke, as she always did, when the sun broke in at her eastward windows with a noise like music. She kicked off the figured coverlet and lay naked in the long bars of sun for a time, touching herself awake, finding eyes, knees, breasts, red-gold hair all in place and where she had left them. Then she stood, stretched, brushed the last of sleep from her face, and knelt by the bed amid the squares of sun and said, as she had every morning since she could speak, her prayers:

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley/little-big/daily-alice-awoke.md)

> This was the problem: if what had to be discovered lay in the what-was-to-be, then they could discover that easily enough. It was what-had-been that was hard to keep in mind. That's the way it is for beings who are immortal or nearly so; they know the future, but the past is dark to them; beyond the present year is the door into aeons-ago.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley/little-big/this-was-the.md)

> Sophie's hard first question to the cards had not, precisely, gone without an answer, it had been transmuted into questions about the question. It had branched and rooted like a tree, growing questions like buds, and then at some moment all the questions had become one question: what tree is this?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-crowley/little-big/sophies-hard-first.md)