“Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.”

“Think about how often — before cell phones, before any kind of caller ID — you answered the landline as a child and had to have an exchange, however brief, with aunts or uncles or family friends. Even if it was that five-second check-in, How are you doing, how is school, is your mom around — it meant periodic real-time vocal contact with an extended community, which, through repetition, it reinforced.”

“Isn’t the winter ground, too, a gesture of grief? The names of saints linger like seasons bearing witness.”

“Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. […] I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf.”

“Outright atheism merits greater respect than does wordly indifference. An out-and-out atheist stands only one step below the most consummate faith, but an indifferent man never has any beliefs, but only base fear.”

“Emerging from the train, I found it was fully night, the air excited by foreboding and something else, something like the feel of a childhood snow day when time was emancipated from institutions, when the snow seemed like a technology for defeating time, or like defeated time itself falling from the sky, each glittering ice particle an instant gifted back from your routine.”