9 quotes
We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
He often spoke aloud to himself now, or hummed, without ever noticing it, as if ignoring an old companion who always said the same things.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Plague was plague, and could not be treated lightly. And this plague was obviously worse than most, having killed everyone in the region.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Rock is much more malleable than ideas.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
History till now has been like women's periods, a little egg of possibility, hidden in the ordinary material of life, with tiny barbarian hordes maybe charging in, trying to find it, failing, fighting each other—finally a bloody mess ends that chance, and everything has to start all over.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Anything divine must come to us in worldly clothing, and so it comes to us altered. The divine is like rain striking the earth, and all our efforts at godliness are therefore muddy—all but those few seconds of complete inundation, the moments that the mystics describe, when we are nothing but rain.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)