Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter are the old apartments of religion.

We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.

One does not go to Moscow to get fat.

The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown.

Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.

A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.