“God did not create the earth in such a way that you must believe in Him before things will work”

“God has created everything to function by itself without any interference”

“Everything has been created to function perfectly without even the interference of God”

“When God created time, he also created work as an instrument to convert that time into concrete and physical wealth.”

“Adopt as your ambition the creation of a world in which those who work against you see the light and wake up and succeed, so that the better at which you are aiming can encompass them, too.”

“The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.”

“Smartass Disciple: Where were all things before the time began?Master of Stupidity: What was the time before all things created?”

“The question ‘What was there before creation?’ is meaningless. Time is a property of creation, therefore before creation there was no before creation.”

“Smartass Disciple: Which one was first created, time or things?Master of Stupidity: No things, no changes. No changes, no time.”

“There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of handsThat lift and drop a question on your plate;Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

“Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: ‘This is it. This is it'”.”

“With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters,He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.”

“The other day, when I was deciding where to place a mountain range, how to make a river’s flow detour around underground stalactite caves, and what precise color to give the sky at sunset, I realized I was God… or an artist and a writer.”

“In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one’s surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition.”

“I have often believed the pen to be a needle, and ink to be a thread. Each story is an intricately woven tapestry and with each word I invariably sew a piece of myself into the page.”