“.. or a saint who had spent all his years preparing for his grand entry into heaven, only to discover on his deathbed that heaven was not some blue expanse full of angelic string quartets and opalescent clouds, but an eternity granted for reliving one's happiest moments, and that he had none to remember;”

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened”

“...Bringing the very heavens close enough to touch.It was Zsadist.His eyes closed, his head back, his mouth wide open, he sang.The scarred one, the souless one, had the voice of an angel.”

“It was the happiest Christmas Eve he had ever spent. To quote his own words, he had a rotten Christmas.”

“But of that day and hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven nor the Son but only the Father.’ We are not to think that the Son of God as he is God did not know the day or hour but only that his human nature did not know it because his divine nature had not chosen to reveal it to his human nature.”

“On his last voyage he had seemed on the brink of success and had stood in the prow reciting a grand poem of his own composition to a dim blue promontory in which he recognized one of the capes of Greenland. But it is idle to deny that the general feeling was dampened somehow, when they discovered it was the Cape of Good Hope. In short, the admiral was one of those who keep the world young.”