“We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least -- call it a mechanospiritual sense -- we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us.”

“But we were all young once. It passes, like innocence and a sense of fair play. The only thing left in the end is a good instinct for survival.”

“Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.”

“By “the Permanent Things” [T. S. Eliot] meant those elements in the human condition that give us our nature, without which we are as the beasts that perish. They work upon us all in the sense that both they and we are bound up in that continuity of belief and institution called the great mysterious incorporation of the human race.”

“We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”

“I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.”