There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient

[John] Calvin treats experience as essentially visionary and revelatory from moment to moment, addressed to the individual perceiver, the individual soul. Where this is assumed preconceptions can only distract and obscure, though, of course, as human beings we can never wholly free ourselves of them.

I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.

This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I haste to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.