“He was a physicist, more precisely an astrophysicist, diligent and eager but without illusions: the Truth lay beyond, inaccessible to our telescopes, accessible to the initiates. This was a long road which he was traveling with effort, wonderment, and profound joy. Physics was prose: elegant gymnastics for the mind, mirror of Creation, the key to man's dominion over the planet; but what is the stature of Creation, of man and the planet? His road was long and he had barely started up it, but I was his disciple: did I want to follow him?”

“His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream...an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered...”

“It's a long, arduous road he's starting to travel, but it may be that at the end of it he'll find what's he's seeking.”

“But then an old man was discovered impaled in a ditch, and once again his world had started crumbling away beneath his feet. He wondered how long he could keep this up.”

“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he’s traveling on, then he must close his syes and travel in the dark.”

“A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did what pleased him alone? Who would plough the fields and reap the harvest, if every man had the right to say, 'I don't want to do that.' In this world there is a place for every man, but every man must know his place.”