“My friend (if I may still call him that) believed in humanity, and so he also believed in order, in the order of painting and the order of words, since words are what we paint with.  He believed in redemption.  Deep down he may even have believed in progress.  Coincidence, on the other hand, is total freedom, our natural destiny.  Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don’t know what they are.  Coincidence, if you’ll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet.  A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures.  In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion.  The communion of coincidence and effect and the communion of effect with us.”

– from 2666, by Roberto Bolaño