From Tim Page in a fascinating memoir in The New Yorker (not online):
“It would be easier for me to improvise an epic poem at a sold-out Yankee Stadium than to approach an attractive stranger across the room and strike up a conversation.”
And:
“([H]ere I concur with Virgil Thomson, who once said that worry was one form of prayer that he found acceptable).
it would be easier –theoretically– to offer up a prayer to thor than to deal with an unreceptive or hostile family. everybody is wanting to engage god at the level of another human being, a listening authoritative entity with daily problems and eternal answers