"Feuerbach doesn't imagine the possibility of an existence beyond this one, by which I mean a reality embracing this one but exceeding it, the way, for example, this world embraces and exceeds Soapy’s understanding of it. Soapy might be a victim of ideological conflict right along with the rest of us, if things get out of hand. She would no doubt make some feline appraisal of the situation, which would have nothing to do with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, or the Manhattan Project. The inadequacy of her concepts would have nothing to do with the reality of the situation."

"That's a drastic way of putting it, and not a very precise one. I don't wish to suggest a reality that is simply an enlarged or extrapolated version of this reality. If you think how a thing we call a stone differs from a thing we call a dream- the degrees of unlikeness within the reality we know are very extreme, and I what I wish to suggest is a much more absolute unlikeness, with which we exist, though our human circumstances create in us a radically limited and peculiar notion of existence. "

-The Reverend John Ames to his son, Marilynne Robinson, "Gilead"