” ‘Contendedly adrift in the cosmos,’ were you?” Kitchen said to me. “That is a perfect description of a non-epiphany, that rarest of moments when God Almighty lets go of the scruff of your neck and lets you be human for a little while. How long did the feeling last?”

“Oh - maybe half an hour,” I said.

And he leaned back in his chair and he said with deep satisfaction: “And there you are.”

Bluebeard, Vonnegut