I had imagined email would resemble faxing, and would involve a printer. But there was no printer. There was another world. You could access it from certain computers, which were scattered throughout the ordinary landscape, and looked no different from regular computers. Always there, unchanged, in a configuration no one else could see, was a glowing list of messages from all the people you knew, and from people you didn't know, all in the same letters, like the universal handwriting of thought or of the world.
-- Selin (chapter 1)

Importance: These words, from the opening paragraphs of The Idiot, reflect Selin's relative naivety at discovering email and the internet for the first time, as well as the sense of wonder that accompanies that discovery. Describing the text of emails as like "the universal handwriting of thought," she here suggests the closeness of her thoughts and feelings with the content of the emails exchange that...