Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?

A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

Skibbereen have a hard time at [math]; the best that the smartest of them can do with adding two plus two is guessing: three plus one. Correct, sort of, but not always useful.

And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

I learned to fly on a broom," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "I can learn to milk a goat, I bet." Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found.

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.