Since childhood, I was afflicted with a sick hypersensitivity, and my imagination quickly turned everything into a memory, too quickly: sometimes one day was enough, or an interval of a few hours, or a routine change of place, for an everyday event with a lyrical value that I did not sense at the time, to become suddenly adorned with a radiant echo, the echo ordinarily reserved only for those memories which have been standing for many years in the powerful fixative of lyrical oblivion.

If a coin comes down heads, that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed. Until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

Certainly there is no contending against the Will of God; but still there is some difficulty in ascertaining, and applying it, to particular cases.

On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.

Nurturing and cherishing creation is a command God gives not only at the beginning of history, but to each of us. It is part of his plan; it means causing the world to grow responsibly, transforming it so that it may be a garden, a habitable place for everyone.