Morality after the fact, said Eli from the rear, is worse than no morality at all. — Robert Silverberg

Contrast is everything, Ned said. Incongruity is essential. The secret of art lies in attaining a sense of proper juxtapositions, and what is religion if not a category of art?

The more you succeed in making out of yourself, the more bitter a thing it is to have to die.

Why should that be, LuAnn? Why should we be put into such a wonderful world and then have everything taken away from us? God’s will? No, LuAnn, God is love, and God wouldn’t have done such a cruel thing to us, so therefore there is no God, there’s only death, Death, whom we must reject.