In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.

The librarian was explaining the benefits of the Dewey decimal system to her junior—benefits that extended to every area of life. It was orderly, like the universe. It had logic. It was dependable. Using it allowed a kind of moral uplift, as one's own chaos was also brought under control.

'Whenever I am troubled,' said the librarian, 'I think about the Dewey decimal system.'

'Then what happens?' asked the junior, rather overawed.

'Then I understand that trouble is just something that has been filed in the wrong place. That is what Jung was explaining of course—as the chaos of our unconscious contents strive to find their rightful place in the index of consciousness.

I hated historical novels with fluttering cloaks.

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

...what he told himself on those sea-soaked nights...Others joined in and it was discovered that every light had a story-no, every light was a story. And the flashes themselves were the stories going out over the waves, as markers and guides and comfort and warning.

You had once asked me if I was afraid of death.

I said I was afraid of not living.

I don’t want to eke out my life like a resource in short supply. The only selfish life is a timid one. To hold back, to withdraw, to keep the best in reserve, both overvalues the self, and undervalues what the self is.