As I fell down and peered into the shining cosmos, I beheld the uplifted coils of the great serpent of eternity all twined about the universe. And then the coils began to writhe and wound themselves around the universe twice as tightly as before; they entwined all nature in a thousand folds, they crushed the worlds together and compressed and reduced the infinite temple into a little churchyard chapel. Everything grew narrow, constricted, somber, dreadful. And an immensely prolonged toll of a bell was about to strike the last hour of time ... when I awoke. My would wept for joy that I was again able to worship God - and the joy and the weeping and the faith in Him were my prayer. - Jean Paul, Dream of a World Without God

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. -Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey