“My parents are always arguing about me. Mother wants me to be a rabbi. Father would rather have me study for a doctorate in philosophy. Theyre funny, my parents. My mother lives body and soul for Hasidism: she devotes her actions and thoughts to God. My father adores reason: he devotes all his time to skepticism about the eternal verities. To make peace between them I promised to study religion and philosophy.”

Varady was listening, his eyes half shut, and Michael wondered if he was awake.

“That’s dangerous,” the old man murmurred...

“Its dangerous,” the old man said again. “To swear fidelity to both light and shadow is to cheat. Of the roads that lead to truth there is never more than one. For each man there is only one. In that sense the atheist and the mystic are alike: they both proceed directly to the goal without turning aside. At the goal, of course, they meet. But if their paths cross on the way, they run the risk of cancelling each other out. Do you understand, my boy? You can’t be inside and outside at the same time. Man is too weak, his imagination too poor, to enter the garden at yet remain beyond the wall I know something about that…”

The boy burned with curiosity. He guessed, suddenly, that there was a direct link between the words he had just heard and the wall erected by his parents to protect him from the old man.

Elie Wiesel, The Town Beyond the Wall, 25