"Pelorat sighed. "I will never understand people." "There's nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understan… - Isaac Asimov

For a full day he had checked and rechecked equations and relationships in a rattling uncertainty, mixed with growing excitement and a bitter gratitude that he had been taught at least elementary psychomathematics.

The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives — past and present and to come — forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole? Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you.

Reflexionó unos segundos, mirando a la mujer sentada frente a él y sintiendo que ella podía hacer su desierto menos parecido a un destierro. Se acordó de la otra mujer que trató unos años atrás, pero la borró de su mente con un esfuerzo deliberado. Si alguna vez encontraba otra compañera, tenía que ser una que conociera y comprendiera lo que era el saber, la erudición, y lo que todo ello exigía de una persona.