Some things are taken away from you, some you leave behind and some you carry with you, world without end.

Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter: But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter!

We'll do what life always does defy expectations.

Ah, books." Ziegler, smiling, came up behind me. "They bob like corks on an ocean. Float between worlds, messages in bottles.

The suicidally disgruntled were legion, And their enemies included any and all Americans, Brits, Canadians, Danes, et cetera; or, conversely, all Moslems, dark-skinned people, non-English-speakers, immigrants; all Catholics, fundamentalists, atheists; all liberals, all conservatives...For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape.

Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?

Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don't need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.