But men are such strange creatures, really. I think most of them would rather we weren’t around at all, so they could just spend time mooning over each other. Hero worship and all that stuff.

That’s the way Chris lives, warning everyone who gets close of the lightning that may strike. Never touch anything, never make a mark. But Anatole can’t live that way. The world’s too lonely a place: he has to touch things, he has to put his arms around them.

Soon would come the night in which there was no more work – not the work of the hands, nor the work of the mind, nor the work of the heart.

Education teaches children to lose interest in what matters most to them.