“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.”

“Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.”

“Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.”

“Each one of us is the center of our own universe. That's the only way it can be. From our point of view, we are stationary and everything else is swirling around us, dropping into our lives just for our reaction.”

“We are what we love. We are the things, the people, the ideas we spend our days with. They center us, they drive us, they define us to our very core.Without them, we are empty.”

“You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species... - with us excitedly chattering, "The Universe is created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to us!" - and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.”