“After all, what else is scientific enquiry of any sort other than a controlled version of banging one's head against the universe until something gives?”

“That's what life is. One problem after another. You can't control any of it. All you can do is reach out for something good whenever you can. And hold on no matter what.”

“The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.”

“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”

“But what else can we do when we're so weak? We invest hours each day, months each year, years each lifetime in something over which we have no control; it is any wonder then, that we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre liturgies designed to give us the illusion that we are powerful after all, just as every other primitive community has done when faced with a deep and apparently impenetrable mystery?”

“I don't know how it is with others, and my feeling is that I cannot be like any other. Any other thinks, and then at once thinks something else. I cannot think something else, I think one thing all my life. God has tormented me all my life.”