“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

“Teaching is a calling too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy - angels leading their flocks out of the darkness.”

“There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.”

“If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”

“How stars move tell us that most matter in the universe is dark. When we see stars in the sky, we're only seeing five or 10 percent of the matter that there is in the universe.”

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.”

“The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.”

“Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?”

“The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.”

“Living on silence,
Living by the book.
You get it to a science
Of living on one good look.
So put out all the fires
And blow away the smoke.
I'm getting pretty tired
Of living on hope.”