“He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe”

“He had his ownways of sublimation.”

“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”

“She was the beautiful, lethal,insinuating spider he had waited for all his life. She was the final knife in his heart. He opened his heart with gladness.”

“And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.”

“He thinks of all he has seen and learned: that the universe is indifferent to our human endeavors, that what gives our lives meaning is the passion that invades our hearts and burns in us, and maybe even destroys us.”