Status Updates From The Lathe of Heaven

What a quote:
“Are there really people without resentment, without hate? she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it?
Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it…

I am on the eleventyfirst page and I’ve finally discovered why the book is titled as it is. On a lathe you can cut curves and grooves and shapes in any way you desire, but as you cut, you remove material that cannot be replaced. You can try to reshape a curve, but you only cut closer to the center. Until there is nothing left to shape.