I now understand the need for faith—pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith—as a small life preserver in the wild and endless sea of a universe … - Dan Simmons

I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered. What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.

I learned that poets aren’t God, but if there is a God...or anything approaching a God...he’s a poet. And a failed one at that.

As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth.