Weekly quotations

I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come.

I have come across that quote several times—first in a biography on Lincoln, and more recently in Bill Clinton’s autobiography. This coupled with Robert E. Lee’s imagined words as spoken by Martin Sheen in the early nineties version of Gettysburg:

The issue is in God’s hands. We can only do our duty.

form an almost complete picture of my current state of mind. I have worked hard—preparing, reflecting, planning, strategizing, e-mailing, calling, writing, reading—and now, I am hoping to reap some benefits.

Perhaps one more short quote is needed to fully capture my feelings, a short prayer of fishermen from a small island in Nova Scotia:

Dear God, be good to me;
the sea is so wide
and my boat is so small.

I feel I must accomplish something soon, if only through sheer will—and I desperately need a more normal job on top of it all. I have come about as far with preparation as I can alone, and now I need to begin doing. Here’s to hoping, and praying.

At least, let us hope and pray that Christopher Hitchens doesn’t crack and come after me with some sort of combination of tantrums and random violence.