I enjoyed watching good-looking idiots looking at each other. A great spectator sport.

Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?

It revealed a cruelty that really made one wonder if the universe was such a good idea after all.

Money to me had always been merely something the sheep used to show each other how wonderful they were.

Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

I looked around the store and what I saw was not very encouraging. There were rows and rows of violent toys...aisle after aisle of training devices for recreational slaughter. No wonder our world was such a mean and violent place...if we teach children that killing is fun, can we really be surprised if now and then someone is smart enough to learn?

For the first time I could remember, I felt weak, woozy and stupid— like a human-being. Like a very small and helpless human-being.