" And our task is harder even than that,” he said, “for we also have to invoke the grey fumes without denying the palpitating breath of roses. We have to give glimpses of a world that sometimes seems to work like a machine bent on some inexorable but inscrutable task, with all of us caught in its coils, cogs meshing always with the absurd, frantic pistons pushing away at the futile.”

“And yet,” he added, his voice now only a murmur which seemed to be a part of the rustling of the withered bushes and the passing noises of the road, “we may also at times suggest a slight faltering in the grinding of the machine, or the brief opening of an unknown vista suggesting that the machine is not all that there is. "

― , Marked to Die: A Tribute to Mark Samuels