“Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession.”

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.

That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.

Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.

The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.

We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We’ve been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It’s really isolated.

I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.

I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That’s enough for me.

Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.

They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.

They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

We often do not see what we do not expect to see.

One day I’m going to write a book about osprey. It has really gotten deep into my bloodstream. So when you ask what else I do, I feel like this is part of what I do….is to watch these birds.

It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.

The question is: until reinforced, can we learn the ways of church mice.

Thereof I believe that no tribunal of any church has any power to make any decree of any force in the law of the land, other than to establish the status of its own communicants within its own church.

I believe in absolute freedom of conscience for all men and equality of all churches, all sects and all beliefs before the law as a matter of right and not as a matter of favor.

I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise.

My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go.