After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: an… - Dan Simmons

I heard the hiss and felt the blessed numbness spreading. If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller.

I realized that night the import and the terrible difficulty in the task ahead of me—in keeping this child safe from the sharp edges of a strange and indifferent universe.
I think that is was on this alien and storm-tossed night that I first understood what it might be like to be a parent.

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 ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.