Sometimes we can choose the paths we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all.

I toyed briefly with an image someone once mentioned to me, of a village in the shadow of a twin-peaked mountain. In the morning the sun rises. At lunch it sets behind the mountain. In the early afternoon it rises once more. The cocks crow for the second time, and later the sun sets again. No. One peak. Metaphors should not be belaboured.

Nothin’ wrong with witchfinding. I’d like to be a witchfinder. It’s just, well, you’ve got to take it in turns. Today we’ll go out witchfinding, an’ tomorrow we could hide, an’ it’d be the witches’ turn to find US.

Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.

There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.

When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.

You can't trust other people. If it's important, you have to do it yourself.