There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second.

Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism.

To be happy in absolute terms, along with our happiness, all the world must be happy so that we don__ have to worry for anyone!

In a beautiful morning, walking barefoot to the work through the green fields with the company of the singing birds... and there you shall meet the real happiness!

Water is so friendly when you have it on your palms, but so evil when they have you on theirs.

On the sea he wished to meet it, if meet it he must. He was not sure why this was, yet he had a terror of meeting the thing again on dry land. Out of the sea there rise storms and monsters, but no evil powers: evil is of earth. And there is no sea, no running of river or spring, in the dark land where once Ged had gone. Death is the dry place.