"That's the point.”"What do you mean?" Ann said."It looms. It's so powerfully there. It almost forces us to ignore it. Or at least to resist it. We have our self-importance. We also have our inadequacy. The former is a desperate invention of the latter.”"I didn't know you were so deep," she said."I'm not normally.”"You've clearly studied the matter.”"The bloody thing has been there for millennia," Charles said. "Climb the hill, have your look and then descend at an even pace, step by step, placing one foot ahead of the other.”"Is it really that easy?”I was beginning to enjoy myself."I think you ought to grow a beard or shave your head," Ann said. "We need a physical demonstration of your commitment to these deep ideas. I'm not sure you're altogether serious. Give us something to believe in. A shaved head would do wonders for this group.”I drove past a sidewalk full of parked cars."We need a Japanese monk," she said to Charles, as if this were an answer they'd been seeking."Shave your head," Charles told me wearily."This is why your car is too small for six," Ann said. "It's Japanese. Why didn't we take two cars? Or three?”David Keller, a husky blond Nebraskan of forty or so, said to me earnestly, "Jim, I think what our friends are trying to point out to you, boy, is that you're a fool, running a fool's errand, in a fool's world.”"You drive, David. You're too drunk to talk. Lindsay knows what I mean.”"You don't want to climb it because it's there," she said."Lindsay cuts to the heart of things.”"If it weren't there, you'd climb it.”"This woman has a gift," I said."We met on a plane," David said. "Somewhere over the ocean. Middle of the night. Local time." He was drawing everything out. "She looked so great. In her Pan Am flight socks. You just wanted to hug her, you know? Like an elf. Her hair kind of delectably frazzled. You wanted to give her a brownie and a glass of milk.”When I pulled up at the Caravel we realized Stock was asleep.