The spark of consciousness is reflected in the river, where a dance of infinite faces lined in profane lights.

I was struck by an awful thought, the kind that cannot be taken back once it escapes into the open air of consciousness; it seemed to me that this was not a place you go to live. It was a place you go to die.

There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever.

Evil never dies. It just changes faces.

For every thinking and reflecting man the existence of evil is a riddle he cannot escape.

And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.