'Before the earth, before the moon, before the stars, before the sun, before the sky, even before the sea, there was only time and Ta'aroa. Ta'aroa made Ta'aroa. Then he made an egg that could house him.'

'Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.'

By ten-forty-five it was all over. The town was occupied, the defenders defeated, and the war finished.