The Lathe of Heaven

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Haber maintained his noncommittal but interested expression,

There was a warmth to the man, an outgoingness, which was real; but it had got plasticoated with professional mannerisms, distorted by the doctor’s unspontaneous use of himself.

he was altogether in this new present, and all his memories led to

it.

don’t know. Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field.

It is and we are.

There were by now so many different memories, so many skeins of life experience jostling in his head, that he scarcely tried to remember anything. He took it as it came. He was living almost like a young child, among actualities only.