“In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect wood-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there absolutely true, beautiful and believable.”

“It was so flat, you know, you could see the curves of the earth. And when a train came into vision at nine o'clock in the morning, it was still leaving at noon.... it took that long to get across the prairie.”

“Whereever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.”

“The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.”

“Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.”

“The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over by the following morning.”

“Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it's true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without the thought?”

“If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.”

“Walked way out in the plains in the moonlight – there is no wind – so still – And so light – I wish you could see it – with miss Hibbits – she was born in Ireland –... The plains start right across the roads from this house – there is just nothing out there – she says she has often ridden till ten or eleven o'clock at night – alone – nothing to be afraid of – because there is nothing out there – Its great – I am not even having the smallest wish for N. Y. …”

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”