The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways". He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window". Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on purpose.

Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.

It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

Outside, a gusty October breeze was combing leaves from the trees and sending them across her backyard in colorful skitters.

You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: 'So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.'

We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.

and then woe is you, Pauly. Woe to the max.