"State your intentions, Muse. I know you're there. Dead bards who pined for you have said You're bright as flame, but fickle as the air. My pen and I, submerged in liquid shade, Much dark can spread, on days and over reams But without you, no radiance can shed. Why rustle in the dark, when fledged with fire? Craze the night with flails of light. Reave Your turbid shroud. Bestow what I require. But you're not in the dark. I do believe I swim, like squid, in clouds of my own make, To you, offensive. To us both, opaque. What's constituted so, only a pen Can penetrate. I have one here; let's go." (Invocation).

"Gold knows things that no man does." (Quicksilver, p. 11).

"No linear indexing system is adequate to express the multi-dimensionality of knowledge." (Quicksilver, p. 36).

"The future is as set as the past, and the future...