I Am Pilgrim

writer called Robert Louis Stevenson once said that ‘sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.’ “He was right—so I say, pull up a chair and pick up your fork; the time is coming when we’ll all be chowing down.”

Then we had a piece of luck, or at least that’s what it looked like. We should have known better, of course.

watching—like he had probably spent half his

“Still, it’s been a rewarding life compared to a lot of men. But you’d be a fool not to think—has anything I’ve done really made a difference?

Working alone under what are called Biosafety Level 4 conditions, in a lab kept at negative air pressure, wearing a suit not dissimilar to the Saracen’s, his air regulator connected to an overhead supply, he unsealed the box in a special cabinet, removed the small piece of saddlecloth, and prepared it for analysis.

It wasn’t salvation he was starting to taste on his lips. It was revenge.

But as people say—are you gonna curse the darkness or light a candle? So let me ask you again—what are you going to do about it?”

say that when men are dying in battle their fingers nearly always twist into the soil, trying to hold on to the earth and all the pain and love it holds.

if you want to make God laugh, tell him you’ve got plans.

He looked at me for a moment. “It’s a Zen story, of course,” he said, smiling again. “The point is—if you want to be free, all you have to do is let go.”