Sublime

The younger Supplicants were always being told they had a crucial part to play, and that bravery was required of them. Usually it meant giving up something, like time or food.

I did not appear to myself to have grown much older. It

all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swims and makes his point or else is carried headlong.

I have said our life was placid, but perhaps that is not the right word. It was at any rate orderly, albeit somewhat monotonous.

“All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.”

They say that a nightmare can frighten you to death, that your heart can literally stop.

They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong.

At