... all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.

As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted

Most of us do know we have no immortality. And when you've found a genius, someone who has already purchased his immortality in musical or literary terms, it's maddening.

It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?

As for the depiction of the Catholic church, it's not meant to be a prediction

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.