The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest.

Our life seems cursed to be a wiggle merely, and a wandering without end.

You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world's hard work.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

The world knew you before you knew the world.

No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and the wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.