Or maybe it is only that we are so habitually inattentive that when some rare but simple geometry grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us into consciousness, we call our response sacred.

It is best not to study too much on who gets what they deserve. It can lead to an overly complicated interpretation of God's personal attributes.

One thing he discovered with a great deal of astonishment was that music held for him more then just pleasure. There was meat to it. The grouping of sounds, their forms in the air as they rang out and faded, said something comforting to him about the rule of Creation. What the music said was that there is a right way for things to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and drift, but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument that life did not just happen.

The Sixties were different in an isolated place. We got two television channels if the wind was blowing in the right direction. The radio stations went off at sundown. Then you picked up Chicago and heard the teenage music you really yearned for.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

Marrying a woman for her beauty makes no more sense than eating a bird for its singing. But it's a common mistake nonetheless.

Needing and getting don’t seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.