Commonplace Book

'"...I've lived like a man, and I'll die like a man, like a common man, who had little time for God, and for whom God had little time too, and if God thinks this insulting, surely death is hard enough, and God, if there is a God, will not be harder to me than I should be to a little child who was rude to me. For," he said with a smile, "if there is a God, and He really did make the world, then He won't just be as kind as I am to a little child, but a million times more kind, and if He hasn't as much patience with me as I have with a child, then praying isn't much use."'

from The Case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig (Book VII, Chapter III)