“Disaster is a natural part of my evolution toward tragedy and dissolution.”

“Where [God] is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things.”

“Evolution is a part of nature. The world has strayed away from God, and now interprets its conception for the benefit of blissful ignorance.”

“I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

“Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.”

“The rendering of my thoughts, emotions, and experiences is part comedy and part tragedy as well as history, for life is such a mingling.”