These quotes are intended to be read along with the each passage of the story.  Chronologically, they have preceded the story, but they serve a greater purpose than mere momentary interruptions as one tries to read the text continuously.  They are the ground beneath the story's feet.  It's walls.  It's pulpy landscape.  It persists and pesters the reader just as the the very existence of Edward Lane and his observations have done for nearly two hundred years.  They are the memories that we cannot erase from our lives.  Memories of our parents and our grandparents, of floating with former lovers, of youthful travels before we settled into our sedentary and sedimentary lives, painful memories of mistakes and misunderstandings, hard memories.  We can't erase them.  They are etched within our souls like the carvings in the hard granite facades of the great temples along the Nile.  The are impervious to corrosion, like premium copper plumbing and fine press printing plates.  They have everlasting power the their depth.  They cannot be erased without destroying the temple, our very own plumbing or the press.  Dare we try to alter them or destroy them, we risk a calamity no less than the one destroyed the great Library of Alexandria.  We risk destroying our history.