You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.

Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it.

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible.

Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges - on gifts, trades, loans - and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.