This was long before the term 'single-parent family' came into use; back then it was a 'broken home'.

WHORES. Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius.

The better you know someone, the less well you often see them (and the less well they can therefore be transferred into fiction). They may be so close as to be out of focus, and there is no operating novelist to dispel the blur.

The rainbow in place of the unicorn? Why didn't God just restore the unicorn? We animals would have been happier with that, instead of a big hint in the sky about God's magnanimity every time it stopped raining.

Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

Loving humanity means as much, and as little, as loving raindrops, or loving the Milky Way. You say that you love humanity? Are you sure you aren’t treating yourself to easy self-congratulation, seeking approval, making certain you’re on the right side?

History is the lies of the victors.