I don't believe in God, but I miss him. That's what I say when the question is put. I asked my brother, who has taught philosophy at Oxford, Geneva and the Sorbonne, what he thought of such a statement, without revealing that it was my own. He replied with a single word: 'Soppy.'

(Julian Barnes, Nothing to be frightened of, 2009)

Und das ist erst der Anfang. Eigentlich steht auf mindestens jeder zweiten Seite des Buches ein Satz, der danach schreit zitiert zu werden, wie z. B. der hier

"The Fury of the resurrected atheist: that would be something worth seeing..."

Oder diese zweite Hälfte eines Absatzes ungefähr im mittleren Teil:

We live broadly according to the tenets of a religion we no longer believe in. We live as if we are creatures of pure free will when philosophers and evolutionary biologists tell us this is largely a fiction. We live as if the memory were a well-built and efficiently staffed left-luggage office. We live as if the soul - or spirit, or individuality, or personality - were an identifiable and locatable entity rather than a story the brain tells itself. We live as if nature and nurture were equal parents when the evidence suggests that nature has both the whip hand and the whip.

Doch, mittlerweile finde ich das Buch nicht mehr nur "ein bißchen verstörend."

Erste Sätze

Aber gut verstörend, oder?