“I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I’m not sure. Perhaps because great books seem heavensent. Perhaps because I know that each nove is a puny but very valiant attempt at godlike behavior. Perhaps because there is no difference between the finest poetry and most transcendent mysticism. Perhaps because writers like Thomas Merton, who are able to enter the realm of the spirit and come away with fine, lucid prose. Perhaps because of more secular writers, like John Steinbeck, whose every passage, it seems to me, peals with religiousity and faith. It once occured to me that literature — all art really — is either talking to people about God, or talking to God about people.”

“One reason might be that if I hadn't tripped, I'd have been hamburger.When this sort of thing occurs, people often say that there was some power greater than themselves at work. This sounds reasonable. I am just suggesting that it is not necessary to equate "greater than ourselves" with "stretched across the heavenly vault." It could mean "just slightly greater." A cocoon of energy that we carry with us, that is capable, under some conditions, of affecting physicality. Furthermore, I conjecture that the totality of all these souls is what constitutes the Godhead. I mean this in the same sense as the "Leviathan" of Thomas Hobbes, whereby man, that is everyone together, creates "that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man, though of greater statute and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defense it was created."And that leads me to my Insight: God was not there at the beginning of evolution; God is what lies at the end of it.”

“I liked sports real well myself. And when I was about thirteen, I thought I knew why. I looked at it this way. God put you in a body, and He made that body subject to a lot of natural laws, you know? Like gravity and stuff. You see, Doc, I was brought up very religious, and I believed in God. And I believed in a soul. And I got to thinking that maybe the soul was like a prisoner in the body. Maybe the soul was too big for the body and was always trying to get out. And sports was - well, according to natural laws, you should only be able to run so fast, right? I mean, you get your legs working, you get your muscles churning as fast as they can go, you take into account the wind against you, stuff like that, all natural and scientific, and then you know just how fast you can go. You see? But me, I figured that there was something inside you, inside your soul, that could make you go just a little bit faster. Just a little bit faster, and it didn't have anything to do with muscles or nature or anything. It was your soul doing it. And when your soul made you go just that little bit faster, well then, for that moment, you were free. Does that make any sense?”

“So Tony played baseball. That is, indeed, just about all that Tony did do. I don't know why it appealed so much to Tony. I suppose it was because in baseball you a part of something, the team, but at the same time you are alone. No one can get close to you, everyone is at his specific position on the field. Mostly, Tony liked to hit. That's what baseball is about, finally - one person with one stick of wood finding that one spot on the baseball that makes everything connect. Everything. Not just the bat and ball. It makes everything connect.' Tanya tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. 'Do you know what I mean?'Crybaby nodded violently - he'd had a few nips at the bottle himself. 'A guy I played with called it 'the sweet spot.' Oh boy, do I know what you mean! Sometimes you could smack that ball and everything would make sense. As long as that ball was up in the air, everything would make sense. I used to have a dream, when I was younger, that one day I'd pop one, and it'd go up in the air and over the infield and over the outfield and out of the park and just keep going. Around and around the world, just like the moon. And everything would make sense.”

“Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way—the way of art—for the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusa’s head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same direction—is it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusa’s head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?”

“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”

“It’s like someone who prays every night saying God’s a good listener. Just because you’re talking to us doesn’t mean we’re listening. With me and God, you never really know.”