This is the last night when he is nowhere. Tomorrow, life will find him again. - John Updike

Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them.

It comes to him: growth is betrayal. There is no other route. There is no arriving somewhere without leaving somewhere.

The faith in an afterlife, however much our reason ridicules it, very modestly extends our faith that each moment of our consciousness will be followed by another - that a coherent matrix has been prepared for this precious self of ours. The guarantee that our self enjoys an intended relation to the outer world is most, if not all, of what we ask from religion. God is the self projected onto reality by our natural and necessary optimism. He is the not-me personified.