I am Gravity, I am That against which the Rocket must struggle, to which the pre-historic wastes submit and are transmuted to the very substance of History.

I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance.

The body, she says, is subject to the force of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.

What am I? The modest narrator who accompanies your triumphs; the dancer who supports you when you rise in your lovely grace; the branch upon which you rest a moment when you are tired of flying; the bass that interposes itself below the soprano’s fervour to let it climb even higher — what am I? I am the earthly gravity that keeps you on the ground. What am I, then? Body, mass, earth, dust and ashes. — You, my Cordelia, you are soul and spirit.” — Johannes the Seducer, from_Either/Or_

To the militant, identity is everything.

And life confided the secret to me: behold, it said, l am that which must always overcome itself.

I am what I have become

She turns to me sharply. “To live _is_ to fight,” she snaps. “To preserve life is to fight _everything_ that man stands for.” She takes an angry huff of air. “And now her, too, with all the bombs. I fight them every time I bandage the blackened eye of a woman, every time I remove shrapnel from a bomb victim.”

Her voice has raised but she lowers it again. “That's my war,” she says. “That's the war I'm fighting.

Gravity is a bitch until she's on your side.

I am not who I was, but I know who I am.

I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

...What you are is a force — a force that makes it possible for your body to live, a force that makes it possible for your whole mind to dream...You are life