Someday he'd be quicker... to be like the sun, which only seems to wander slowly across the sky, yet whose rays are as quick as the blink of an eye. … - Sten Nadolny

Large animals, John thought, move more slowly than mice and wasps. Perhaps he was secretly a giant.

In the study of history, slowness is an advantage. The scholar decelerates the fast-moving events of past days until his mind can fathom them. Then... he can demonstrate to the rashest king how he should have acted in battle.

If he could just stay there and gaze upon the land like a stone, whole centuries long, while grassy plains became forests and swamps turned into villages or tilled land. ...He'd be recognized as human only when he stirred.