“It’s not God I fear but the woman who bore him.”

“Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him.
As nature’s curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in,
For this was woman’s son.
“’T was all I had,” she stricken gasped;
Oh, what a livid boon!”

“I think that if there were a God, there would be less evil on this earth. I believe that if evil exists here below, then either it was willed by God or it was beyond His powers to prevent it. Now I cannot bring myself to fear a God who is either spiteful or weak. I defy Him without fear and care not a fig for his thunderbolts.”

“Yes, here I am returning, the woman who bore herself to the bottom and back. Who wanted to swim like dolphins, leaping waves and diving. Who wanted only to belong to herself.”

“The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

“I'm filled with awe, as I always am, as I watch her transform from a woman who calls me to kill a spider to a woman immune to fear.”

“Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there.”

“Give me a man who is man enough to give himself just to the woman who is worth him. If that woman were me, I would love him alone and forever”

“I wrote to my brother a few years ago. I told him I was bored with his e-mails about religion. Bored with his scientific perspective, as he calls it. Bored with political faith. I asked him to stop.”

“One cannot love God without fearing him, any more than one can love one's neighbor without respecting him; not to fear God is to prevent Him showing mercy.”