So we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

Who knew that better than I, who had presided over the death of my own body, seeing all I called human wither and die only to form an unbreakable chain which held me fast to this world yet made me forever its exile, a specter with a beating heart?

It draws it's strength, this big secret, from the same root from which I draw my strength, both the good and the bad, because in the end, they cannot be separated.

DO I BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ARE BASICALLY GOOD? Yes, I do believe that, and I trust Buddhists and Hindus and Moslems to seek the good and to want to live in peace.

To be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost." So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions." An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes.

But just remember, life without me would be even more unbearable.

Time can tick when there is no clock.