“Life in its essence is a mere manifestation of an unwritten perpetual contract with eternity.”

“And okay, fair enough, but there is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.”

“There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.”

“The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.”

“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”

“And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.”