The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.

At most, recognizing that our history was inspired by many tales we now recognize as false should make us alert, ready to call to constantly into question the very tale we believe true, because the criterion of the wisdom of the community is based on constant awareness of the fallibility of our learning.

They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.