She always had been in touch with something outside of human ken. She had something in her no other human had. You sensed it, but you could not name it, for there was no name for this thing she had. And she had fumbled with it, trying to use it, not knowing how to use it, charming off the warts and healing poor hurt butterflies and only God knew what other acts that she performed unseen.

A machine, a mechanism, no more than a tool - technological brother to the hoe, the wrench, the hammer - and yet as far a cry from these as the human brain was…

A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river - but in a million years from now there would be, if no…

There is a certain rapport, a sensitivity - I don't know how to say it - that forms a bridge between this strange machine and the cosmic spiritual force. It is…