He Had Never Expected Death To Be

You Have Made Me Ashamed Of The Wasted Years. You Have Made Me Acknowledge That No Darkness Has Ever Been Deep Enough To Extinguish My Personal Knowledge Of Love. And All Around Me In This World I See Evidence Of Love. I See Love. I See It In The Human Struggle. I See Its Undeniable Penetration In All That Humans Have Accomplished In Their Poetry, Their Painting, Their Music, Their Love Of One Another And Refusal To Accept Suffering As Their Lot.

And So This Young One, This Young One Whom I Had So Loved, I Had To Forsake, No Matter How Broken My Heart, No Matter How Lonely My Soul, No Matter How Bruised My Intellect And Spirit.

…being An Atheist Required Discipline Very Like That Of Being Catholic. One Could Never Yield To The Idea Of A Supernatural Authority, No Matter How Often One Might Be Tempted. To Think That A Personal God Had Made The World Was To Yield To A Demonic And Superstitious And Destructive Belief.

And Books, They Offer One Hope -- That A Whole Universe Might Open Up From Between The Covers, And Falling Into That Universe, One Is Saved.

The Supernatural World Has Always Been More Real To Me Than The Real World.