You fainted,' Tom said. Reg coughed. No, I didn't,' he said. 'Women faint. People afraid of needles faint. Men black out.

What I say is, don't go playing unless you can win. Only sit down to chess with idiots, only kick a dog what's dead already, and don't love a lady unless she loves you first.

In the Darwinian world, self-preservation is the ultimate shiny good.

We grasp because God does. We create, and fall short, because God does. We continue creating because we fell short, and fall short again, because God does. Because one act of creation, one attempt at capture, is only one breath and we must breathe again. And again. And again. Here we stand (and sit and sleep), the many images of the Imager, and we can do no other.

Do not fear the shadowy places. You will never be the first one there. Another went ahead and down until He came out the other side.

Mumbling priests swinging stick cans on their chains and even witch doctors conjuring up curses with a well-buried elephant tooth have a better sense of their places in the world. They know this universe is brimming with magic, with life and riddles and ironies. They know that the world might eat them, and no encyclopedia could stop it.

Tom had traveled around the sun eleven times when the delivery truck brought his mother's newest fridge, but a number doesn't really describe his age.