I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I.

And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.

Certain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Mass. Lottery numbers.

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

So which is the lie? Hard or soft? Silence or time?

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.

I'm not putting any of this well. I am not and never have been an intellectual. I am not articulate, and the subjects that I am trying to describe and discuss are beyond my abilities. I am trying, however, the best I can, and will go back over this as carefully as possible when I am finished, and will make changes and corrections whenever I can see a way to make what I'm discussing clearer or more interesting without fabricating anything.