"Swimming was for me the closest a human being could come to flight. The freedom of it, the ease, the elegance, the delirious escape."
"Today, with the foul miasma of evangelism rising up to engulf us from every corner of God's poor earth it is hard to remember that good Christian lives were once lived without words like 'outreach' and 'salvation' being dragged into general conversation. God was a dignified, generous, father and Christ his beautiful, liquid-eyed son: they loved you even when they saw you on the lavatory or caught you stealing sweets. That was Christianity, something quite unconnected to hymns, psalms, anthems and the liturgy of the church."
"LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to every one of these essences of existence, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry 'Wow!' all the time, which is one of LSD's most distressing and least endearing side-effects."