“When I look up, there are women as far as I can see, standing in the river one behind the other, generations going back to the beginning time, from the very womb of God.”

“There was this time when I looked at a picture and thought it was a man with horns, but when I stepped up to study it I could see it was actually a butterfly with wings standing up straight. That’s what happens when you stop looking at things from far away. My advice… look at whatever you’re scared of from a different angle. Look at it up really close.”

“It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so manygenerations hence,Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and thebright flow, I was refresh'd,Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swiftcurrent, I stood yet was hurried,Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and thethick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd.”

“It sounds like a lot when you summarize it, but I don't do all of it every day. If you want to know the truth, most days I feel like I'm miserably behind and only doing about half of what I should be doing. But when you look back you can see that you're building something. I think people who say 'Don't look back' are crazy. I wouldn't survive if I weren't looking back and patting myself on the back all the time for making it this far.”

“Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can’t explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.“And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end?”I shrugged.“You see?”He leaned back. He smiled.“When you come to the end, that’s where God begins.”

“That's when I started to leave it behind. I realized that I got my entire validation from women. Women became like gods to me, but false gods.”