“ ‘Now,’ she said to herself, ‘when people believed in God they carried Him from one place to another. They carried Him through the jungles and across the Arctic Circle. God watched over everybody, and all men where brothers. Now there is nothing to carry with you from one place to another, and as far as I’m concerned, these people might as well be kangaroos; yet somehow there must be someone here who will remind me of something . . . I must try to find a nest in this outlandish place.’ ”

(Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies, p. 41.)