The Year of the Flood

time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar: it’s a sea on which you float.

Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar.

“It's better to hope than mope!”

You couldn’t leave words lying around where our enemies might find them.

“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”

Without the light, no chance; without the dark, no dance.

“We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.”

As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn't imagine how it was that you hadn't known it before. Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.

You can forget who you are if you're alone too much.

I could see how you could do extreme things for the person you loved. Adam One said that when you loved a person, that love might not always get returned the way you wanted, but it was a good thing anyway because love went out all around you like an energy wave, and a creature you didn't know would be helped by it.

“I'm fine," said Pilar, "for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.”

How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it.

Everybody knew. Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.

We are using up the Earth. It is almost gone.

“we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.”