Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. - John Crowley

Letting the task be master is a hard task for men, hardest of all for the angel’s children, however distantly descended. But it could be learned: learned is the only way it could be learned, for I am a man. Far away and long ago the angels struggled in great anguish with the world, struggled unceasingly; but I would learn, yes, in the long engine summer of the world I would learn to live with it, I would.

This was what he had once upon a time expected and hoped of all books that he opened, that each be the one book he required, his own book.

The angels saw him, who manage those skies he put his question to: they saw him, for this ring of earth is a place they often stop by, to gaze into it, as into a mirror, or through it, as through a keyhole. They smiled, hearing his question; and then one by one turned away, to look over their shoulders – for they were disturbed by a noise, a noise as of footfalls far away and faint, the footfalls of someone coming through behind.