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.

A woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that.

If we one day cease to exist, what will be remarkable is that we were ever here at all.

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

Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.

Nowhere have I ever heard of Satan taking the form of an avuncular hippie. No doubt he could. It just seems inefficient.

In a lot of places, of course, the '80s had never really come to an end.