I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely beca… - Umberto Eco

As a little drop of water added to a quantity of wine is completely dispersed and takes on the color and taste of wine, as red-hot iron becomes like molten fire losing its original form, as air when it is inundated with the sun’s light is transformed into total splendor and clarity so that it no longer seems illuminated but, rather, seems to be light itself, so I felt myself die of tender liquefaction, and I had only the strength left to murmur the words of the psalm: “Behold my bosom is like new wine, sealed, which bursts new vessels,” and suddenly I saw a brilliant light and in it a saffron-colored form which flamed up in a sweet and shining fire, and that splendid light spread through all the shining fire, and this shining fire through that golden form and that brilliant light and that shining fire through the whole form.

I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.