The Monstrumologist Religion Quotes

My fortitude gave way. I was but a boy, you'll recall; a boy who had been in his share of tight spots and dire straits, to be sure, a boy who had seen things that would make a grown man blanch, but still a boy, still but a child. I slid down the wall and rested my forehead against my upraised knees. I closed my eyes and prayed. My father had not been a particularly religious man; aspects of the divine he had entrusted to my mother's care. She had prayed with me every night and had taken me to church every Sunday, to instill a bit of piety in me, but I had inherited my father's indifference to religion and had gone through the motions of devotion without much conviction. A prayer was mere words repeated by rote. When I arrived at the doctor's house, of course, all churchgoing and prayer had come to an abrupt halt, and I did not pine over the loss. But now I prayed. I prayed until I ran out of words, and then I prayed with my entire being, a prayer not composed of words but out of the profound, wordless longing of my soul. (12.202)