“Surely God loves to get out of church buildings and go visit people where they hunger for reality.”

“When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation...”

“The message of the Nazarene had been turned into a weapon in some religious power game. 'Look how they love one another' just didn't seem an apt description of the bizarre religious theatre I'd just witnessed.”

“In retrospect, I now believe this expected donation of ten percent of income to the Fellowship was based on bad exegesis of an old Jewish taxation law that Jesus Himself seemed to completely ignore.”

“abe said where d'you want this killin done / God said out on highway 61”

“If you're looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came. because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same.”

“I’m crazy about this City. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it’s not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep. It’s the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it. When I look over strips of green grass lining the river, at church steeples and into the cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I’m strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible-like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one. The people down there in the shadow are happy about that. At last, at last, everything’s ahead. The smart ones say so and people listening to them and reading what they write down agree: Here comes the new. Look out.”