“Darkness devours every shining day.

Darkness demands and always has its way.

Darkness listens, watches, waits.

Darkness claims the day and celebrates.

“Courage, love, friendship,

compassion, and empathy

lift us above the simple beasts

and define humanity.”

“In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite as it seems.”

“To know the darkness is to love the light, to welcome dawn and fear the coming night.”

“Without a gleaning of purpose in life,

we have no vision, we live in strife”

“We can embrace love; it's not too late.

Why do we sleep, instead of with hate?

Belief requires no suspension

to see that Hell is our invention.”

“Humanity yearns so desperately to equal God’s great creativity.

In some creations, how we shine: music, dance, story weaving, wine.”

“Or are their dark fears exaggerated?

Are these doom-criers addlepated?

Those who fear the coming of all Hells are those who should be feared themselves”

“Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song.

In each man’s troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.”

“Holy men tell us life is a mystery.

They embrace that concept happily.

But some mysteries bite and bark

and come to get you in the dark.”

“We make Hell real; we stoke its fires. And in its flames our hope expires. Heaven, too, is merely our creation. We can grant ourselves our own salvation. All that’s required is imagination.”

“We long to find the splendid light that will cast a revelatory beam upon the meaning of the human dream.”

“Evil is a faceless stranger,

living in a distant neighborhood.

Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,

with merry eyes and an open smile.

“Life without meaning cannot be borne.

We find a mission to which we’re sworn”

“Night has patterns that can be read

less by the living than by the dead.”

“Pestilence, disease, and war

haunt this sorry place.

And nothing lasts forever;

that’s a truth we have to face.”

“Stranger fiends hide here in human guise than reside in the valleys of Hell.

But goodness, kindness, and love arise in the heart of the poor beast, as well.”

“We spend vast energy and time plotting death for one another. No one, nowhere, is ever safe. Not father, child, or mother.”