Without memory there can be no insight. Without love, there can be no appreciation.

I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself.

The old gods will bring about vengeance not so much because they exist but because I once honored them.

There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.

We live in a world full of accidents finally in which on aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever striving to create and maintain an ethical balance. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky – such brutal beauty is beyond dispute.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

It is tragic that many in America think of us - Christians - as being people who hate others.