But I want to pray to Allah. I want to be a Christian.

Afterwards, when it's all over, you meet God. What do you say to God?

Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team.

How true is that necessity is the mother of invention, how very true.

I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.

When the course of experience made me see that there is no saviour and no special grace, no remission beyond the human, that pain is to be endured and fades, if it fades, only with time, then God became nothing to me but a dyslexic dog, with neither bark nor bite.

Work, work, work, but what mark do we leave, what point do we make? People who are too beholden to work become like erasers: as things move forward, they leave in their wake no trace of themselves.