“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”

“All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: 'Dead men don't wear plaid.' Hmm… Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means.”

“There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.”

“The thing is to be happy,' he said. 'No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, and you're just there, going along easy in the world.”

“You are the ever-expanding universe to me”

“If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”

“Nothing in life worth having comes easy.
That is unless you are rich.”

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things — trout as well as eternal salvation — come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

“The universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter. As any economist could have predicted, the result of all that borrowing, was inflation. The universe expanded and borrowed at an ever-increasing rate. Fortunately, the debt of gravitational energy will not have to be repaid until the end of the universe.”

“Nothing
would be
easier without
you,
because you
are
everything,
all of it-
sprinkles, quarks, giant
donuts, eggs sunny-side up-
you
are the ever-expanding
universe
to me.”