What made him imagine he could have a dialogue with them?” “He’s Sokrates,” I said. “He’s like a two-year-old sticking pencils in his ear,” she said.

Good,” I said. “And we will do the same. But I miss him. I miss him like I miss Mother. Of course we’ll honor their memory, and of course their souls have gone on to new lives, but I hadn’t finished talking to them in this life.” I knew what death meant now. It was conversations cut off.

We cannot change what has happened. We go on from where we stand. Not even Necessity knows all ends.

Marx is like Plato, he has dreams that can’t come true as long as people are people.

One of the things I’ve always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you’d never have thought about before.

I love the train. Sitting here I feel connected to the last time I sat here, and the train to London too. It is in-between, suspended; and in rapid motion towards and away from, it is also poised between. There’s a magic in that, not a magic you can work, a magic that’s just there, giving a little colour and exhilaration to everything.

You can’t do magic with books unless they’re very special copies.

Human nature is against it. People just tend to behave in certain ways because they are people. And.

Everyone had their own internal life and their own soul, and they were entitled to make their own choices.

And his mother, especially as Botticelli had painted her and Auge carved her, seemed like a perfectly nice goddess.