"Human purposes are dwarfed by such a blank horizon." (Chapter 1, 5)

"On regular nights there were only the stars, the cry of a fox, and the sounds of the wind." (Chapter 1, 15)

"My father was elated as he surveyed the realization of his dream to own land and to raise his own flocks of sheep and cattle. For my mother, not born to the bush, my father's long-dreamed-of property was a nightmare of desolation." (Chapter 2, 18)

"Here, pressed into the earth by the weight of that enormous sky, there is real peace. To those who know it, the annihilation of self, subsumed into the vast emptiness of nature, is akin to a religious experience." (Chapter 2, 25)

"But no war was ever really just because of the pain and suffering inflicted not only on soldiers, but on civilians. We should work for a world where there were other ways of settling conflicts. It...