That's what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.

Let the jagged edge of sobriety be now dulled.

And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.

What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?

How quickly one accepts the incredible if only one sees it enough.