I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead. - Dan Simmons

Perhaps our reservoir of spiritual faith has run out.
Perhaps it should have run out a long time ago, I said sternly. Superstition has taken a terrible toll on our species. Wars...pogroms...resistance to logic and science and medicine...not to mention gathering power in the hands of people like those who run the Pax.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

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.