"Because the story has been told so often, it has taken root in every man's mind. And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere.
If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it."



"The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side; that there was almost a mogical protection about them. And those people who had rushed to see them crowded back and let them pass and did not speak to them."


-extracts from The Pearl