Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.

They went inside. The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.

Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.

'It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,' Vic says, looking through his magic sight. 'Five guys on it. Headed our way.' He fires another round. 'Correction. Four guys on it.' Boom. 'Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.' Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. 'Correction. No boat.'

Part of being a sentient human is the ability to anticipate others' mental states - to say "Fred's going to hate this but Jane would love it."

A lot of secular, modern people claim to be disillusioned whenever they learn that any smart person is religious. That's applicable to Newton as it is to any other religious smart person