M. John Harrison

"They were arrant newcomers, driven by the nouveau enthusiasms of a cowboy economy. They had no idea what they had come for, or how to get it: they only knew they would. They had no idea how to comport…"

"Anna accumulated things as a way of insulating herself against her own thoughts."

"People think it’s a failure to live alone. But it isn’t. The failure is to live with someone because you can’t face anything else."

"Then he heard a voice say: “It was amazing to them to discover they had always been in the garden without understanding it,” and knew for certain that the inside and the outside of everything are alwa…"

"She had impressed him as capable of behaviour even more meaningless than most human beings. He had watched her kill her own people with a ferocity that betrayed real grief. But she was someone, he had…"