“Sure, at some level scientists know nanobots will destroy mankind. They just can't resist seeing how it happens.”

“What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the hiker and make him at home

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.