“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ”

“Even amidst tragedy there is laughter, sometimes farce. The degree of farce depends on who is running the tragedy.”

“...she had come long ago to understand that loneliness was the curse of those who were free, even of all those who rose a little above the level of ordinary humanity.”

“An effort made for the happiness of other lifts us above.”

“To take seriously the universality of the Word is to grasp that one encounters that Word in one's own human existence every day. To have life and to live in the world is to know, at some level of awareness, the reality of that mysterious power that has made life the way it is and has made each of us the way we are, and the truth that we are bound inescapably to live in relationship to that same mysterious power and to one another. To have human consciousness is to experience the universe as a sacred place and to understand that if we fail to appreciate and respect it, we do so at our own peril. To show up in life as a human being is to know in one's heart the sacred worth of every creature and therefore to know the obligation to treat every other human being with dignity and honor. And to be a human being is also to experience, whether ever acknowledged, moments of grace in which the goodness of creation and the blessedness of one's own particular life have become transparent.”

“Good God, what does it matter? If life is a tragedy, or a farce, or a disaster, or anything else, what do I care! Let life be what it likes. Give me a drink, that's what I want just now.”