65
" Knowledge drifts in and out of my mind" , said Lestat with a little look of honest distress and a shake of his head. " I devour it and then I lose it and sometimes I can't reach for any knowledge that I ought to possess. I feel desolate, but then knowledge returns or I seek it out in a knew source." (...)" But you love books, then" , Aunt Queen was saying. I had to listen." Oh, yes," Lestat said. " Sometimes they're the only thing that keeps me alive." " What a thing to say at your age" , she laughed." No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. " And books, they offer one hope - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved. "
66
" Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position. "
― Robertson Davies , Tempest-Tost (Salterton Trilogy, #1)
78
" The huge round lunar clock was a gristmill. Shake down all the grains of Time—the big grains of centuries, and the small grains of years, and the tiny grains of hours and minutes—and the clock pulverized them, slid Time silently out in all directions in a fine pollen, carried by cold winds to blanket the town like dust, everywhere. Spores from that clock lodged in your flesh to wrinkle it, to grow bones to monstrous size, to burst feet from shoes like turnips. Oh, how that great machine…dispensed Time in blowing weathers. "
― Ray Bradbury , Farewell Summer (Green Town, #3)
