For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each.

Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader's Digest. They've got a page for people like you.

Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature. That's how it should be. Anything invented between your th and th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there. Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.

I can see we're in for a fabulous evening's apocalypse.

We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.