This was the true nature of consciousness and the meaning of matter, that ultimately both were one substance without cause or control outside itself. - David Zindell

Do you want to know the secret of life? Bardo will tell you the secret of life: it's not the amount of time we have, despite what I've just said. No it's not quantity and it's not even quality. It's variety.

Poems are the dreams of the universe crystallized in words.

The elite of the universal religions have always substituted belief in the Infinite for the experience of it. We all need God — but only in small and measured doses. Who can look upon the burning bush and not be destroyed in its flames? Who can bear the heaven and hell of each moment blazing in time? Who can shine like a star? And so, for all but a few of the manswarm, the rare ones who are truly human, it is better to glimpse such a miracle through a dark glass or to grasp it through words only.