The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing - they are busy taking over.

John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'

The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions - anger, jealousy, etc - to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago.

almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial.

You wonder if God doesn't have an answering machine to screen out the prayers of the venal and the boring? And in which category has he placed you?

If love eats the donut, does time eat the hole?

Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.