The Heartless Stone

I'm currently reading Tom Zoeillner's THE HEARTLESS STONE. I'm haven't read too much but it's a great source of information. There's some parts that i'd like to share with the class:

[p.25] "... the strongest linkage of atoms known to chemistry... The hellish foundry of the earth's innards, at depths approaching 120 miles, is the only birthing place for a diamond, which takes its name from the Greek adamas -which means 'indomitable'."

[p.31] "Diamonds follow good deeds...There is a song to the dead -a low guttural chant -that is sung as they work the sifting boards:

My ancestors

If you really exist

From the work I do now

Give me five carats

Ten carats

Twenty carats."

[p.32] "Before I left the Central African Republic, I bought a few paper cards decorated with the wings of butterflies. They had been arranged to make familiar shapes: a man, a hut, two birds, a tree. It seemed to be a reflection of the country as a whole, wings torn off a living thing to make an image of something alien. It has a kind of beauty, but it is beauty at the expense of terrible pain...

And what gives diamonds their hard and remorseless beauty, really? Whether they emerge from the death of a star or the life of plankton makes no difference, for these chips from the earth are nothing more than an empty cage for our dreams -blank surfaces upon which the shifting desires of the heart could be written."