“The hallmark of intelligence is not whether one believes in God or not, but the quality of the processes that underlie one’s beliefs.”

“Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.”

“Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.”

“...either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business...”

“Finding one’s voice is a process of finding one’s passion.”

“If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one’s choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it has the duress of a recoil.” With literary belief, however, “one is always free to choose not to believe.” This, Wood argues, is the freedom of literature; it is what constitutes its “reality.”