One doesn't have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand.

Goddamn you," Jacob said. "There's no damnation, Jacob. No Heaven but the forest and no God but the hive.

I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.

Does it strike you, Mr. Keller, that we live every day in the science fiction of our youth?

Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don't need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.

The suicidally disgruntled were legion, And their enemies included any and all Americans, Brits, Canadians, Danes, et cetera; or, conversely, all Moslems, dark-skinned people, non-English-speakers, immigrants; all Catholics, fundamentalists, atheists; all liberals, all conservatives...For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape.

If I am an agnostic, Calyxa, it's because I'm also a realist.