“In the nineteenth century, The Romantics viewed Nature as benign, a glowing reflection of God's grace. Now we know better. Nature is brutal and, if it is feminine, she's not the kind of woman you can trust. Human beings may be her finest achievement yet, but when you get right down to brass tacks, we're meat. AIDS and organisms like streptococcus don't give a crap that we subdued the earth or produced a Shakespeare...”

“Atheists and their fellow travelers point to Islamic terrorism as a wake-up call that we'd better abandon God or the biblical disasters attributed to him will pale in comparison to what we'll end up doing to ourselves. In other words, God may not be dead, but keeping him alive endangers the human race.”

“Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.”

“The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labour for’, as Sir Thomas More expressed it. The inner voice of prayer expresses itself naturally in action, just as the inner voice of my brain guides all my bodily actions.”

“Quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.”

“Have you fallen in love, Will Henry?" "That's stupid.""What is? Love, or my question?""I don't know.""You don't know? You've tried that trick once. What do you suppose it will work better the second time?""I don't love her. She bothers me." "You have just defined the very thing you denied.”

“What of men? I can't think of anything more banal. I have no doubt — no doubt whatsoever — that once it has obtained the means to do so, the species will wipe itself off the face of the earth. There is no mystery to it; it is our nature. Oh, one might delve into the particulars, but really, what can we say about the species that invented murder? What can we say?”