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Quote by John Pipkin

“Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one’s place in the order of things.”

Quote by John Pipkin

Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

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The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

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“Time lost to pointless delay can never be regained. It is the most reprehensible kind of theft. Why was it that men did not grasp this simple fact? Money comes and goes and comes again, and knowledge can be acquired and forgotten and rediscovered, but time once lost is lost for good, each passing second irretrievable.”

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Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye’s discernment of light and shadow is most acute.”

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Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable.”

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Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“...but at night when he turns the awkward [telescope] skyward, he catches his breath at the clarity of the image and the vast populations of stars unknown to him until then, the riotous glittering in the dark crevices between constellations, a convocation of bright spirits waiting to be found.”

Science Fiction Novel Astronomy

Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“Sketches of mad skies spilling stars caught in spiraling gyres, diagrams for constructing sextants tall as a man and armillary spheres to mimic the motion of the cosmos. He decides that he must have all of it, that he will cram the little observatory with maps and charts, clocks and compasses, and instruments for bringing the sky nearer.”

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“As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water’s surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning.”

Science Fiction Novel Astronomy

Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“Life does not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.”

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Book:The Measure of My Days: One Woman's Vivid, Enduring Celebration of Life and Aging

Source: The Measure of My Days: One Woman's Vivid, Enduring Celebration of Life and Aging

“So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved.”

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Book:The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

Source: The Blind Astronomer's Daughter

“Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched.”

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Book:Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

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“No peace is possible between the novelist and the agélaste [those who do not laugh]. Never having heard God's laughter, the agélastes are convinced that the truth is obvious, that all men necessarily think the same thing, and that they themselves are exactly what they think they are. But it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin.”

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Book:The Art of the Novel

Source: The Art of the Novel