"It costs so much to be a full human being...One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying."

— Morris West, from The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963)

I stumbled across this quote unexpectedly, at the top of the first chapter of North To The Night, Alva Simon's non-fiction account of wintering above the arctic circle in his steel sailboat, Roger Henry.

Morris West is my father.