Another of the things I started to do during this time was what Buddhists normally call meditation or, in Christian terms, contemplative prayer. It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favorite hobby.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

If you tell people enough times that they are unhappy, incomplete, possibly insane and definitely selfish there is bound to come a grey morning when they wake up with the beginning of a nasty cold and wonder if they are lonely rather than simply “alone.”

Ian Watson did an almost full novel length treatment which I've never seen and when he finished it Stanley said to him. I need somebody to smear this with vaginal jelly, and I have to say when I first heard this that I was rather shocked, because he was quite gentlemanly.

Art is an artificial organization of experience.

Gardening gave me a way to work with silence not in silence but with silence - it was a silent creativity.

Wilberforce did not believe in either evolution or extinction. Owen believed in extinction but not evolution. Lamarck believed in evolution but not extinction. Darwin believed in evolution and extinction. All four of them believed in God.

Art forms render ideas accessible to readers who could not receive those insights in any other format.

Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.