While my father was out boozing, she’d read to me by the meager flame. By her voice alone, she could raise up the old stories from the bones of their words and – lilting between shades of comedy and melodrama – turn the dreary space around me into a stage for my wildest imaginings.

– Norman Lock – American Meteor

… and we were hemmed in for winter …

By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers …

… the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action

that had given a common horse wings

and changed a woman into a laurel tree.

– Norman Lock –

I’ve been very near death. And you can’t imagine the wild elation of those moments- it’s the sudden glimpse of the absurdity of life that brings it- when one meets death face to face.

– André Malraux –

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

– André Malraux –