ARCADIA

When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red
trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will
not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as
before. Do you think this is odd? (Thomasina to Septimus, Scene 1)

If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all
the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the
formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so cleaver to do it, the formula must exist
just as if one could. (Thomasina to Septimus, Sc. 1)

If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there'd be a dot
somewhere on the screen. You'd never where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd start to
see this shape. (Valentine to Hannah)

SEPTIMUS It will go to infinity or zero, or nonsense

THOMASINA No, if you set apart the minus roots they square back to sense (Scene 7)

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's
how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy.
To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. (Valentine to Hannah, Sc. 4)