Claudia... you've been a very very naughty little girl.

The library furnished our dreams, helped us shape our ambitions, made up people of books and ideas and grand designs.

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.

I cannot mislead people into believing that I support organized religion. In Jesus' name, I cannot be complicit with many of the things organized religion does.

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

I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil -- religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the elegant abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively to its knees.

It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.