All of the important things ... will turn out to be universally shared. It's why there will be no true aliens.

People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed.

... the truth is that when your people don't tell you what you need to know, it's a failure of leadership.

Tides are like politics. They come and go with a great deal of fuss and noise, but inevitably they leave the beach just as they found it. On those few occasions when major change does occur, it is rarely a good news.

There's not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer.

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.

Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick.