"some things never change. there is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto - God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger. sometimes i think they are all the same. a reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined." -- dorothy allen