Children, bored and opinionated, are scholars of the most dogmatic stripe.

It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, it's that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.

Ninjas are silly. They are the flower fairies of gong fu and karate.

People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you're a teacher you're in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they're old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don't actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch.

The trouble with shooting people, Edie Banister now remembers, is that it's so hard to do just one.

Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the forces in my life confound one another. Better, for the moment, to be here and now, without history or future.

Never mind, never mind, let's get to the part where we smite the unrighteous. I've brought my most alarming teeth!