Embracing the fizz and seethe of a metropolis was safer then, as was hitchhiking, but my tropism to crowds has never changed. Rubbing shoulders with thousands of people, my spirits surge in the same way that I grin at seeing a one-year-old, or will approach someone elderly, optimistic at the prospect of talking with him. A basic faith kicks in. It's automatic, not ideological, though I believe life has meaning. I find diversity a comfort in the wilds and in the city — that there are more species than mine, more personalities than me — and believe in God as embodied in the earth and in metropolises. I believe that life is good.
— Edward Hoagland, Compass Points