No man ever looked more like a President than Harding; it was his only qualification for the job, but it was enough to get him there. - Robert Silverberg

Contrast is everything, Ned said. Incongruity is essential. The secret of art lies in attaining a sense of proper juxtapositions, and what is religion if not a category of art?

But, though he trusted his intuitive judgments, he rarely acted on them until he had had time to make a more rational reconnaissance.

I think we made love three times that final summer. Made love! Preposterous euphemism for fucking, almost as bad as the most grotesque of all, slept together. Whatever Sundara and I made, in those three pressings of flesh to flesh, love couldn’t have been the commodity; we made sweat, we made rumpled sheets, we made heavy breathing, we even made orgasms, but love? Love?