"The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths." - Arthur C. Clarke

He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence — indeed, a way of life.

But he knew well enough that any man in the right circumstances could be dehumanised by panic.

Men had sought beauty in many forms — in sequences of sound, in lines upon paper, in surfaces of stone, in the movements of the human body, in colours ranged through space. All these media still survived in Diaspar and down the ages others had been added to them. No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered, or if it had any meaning outside the mind of Man. And the same was true of love.