I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot).

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

A man without a home can't be lost.

I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.

I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares about how we are or what we do. ... Religious skeptics often become very bitter towards the end, as did Mark Twain. ... I know why I will become bitter. I will finally realize that I have had it right all along: that I will not see God, that there is no heaven or Judgement Day.

Trout was petrified there on Forty-second Street. It had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth.