There's no point living if you can't, at least occasionally, live.

The attacking piece displaces its victim. The vanquished piece leaves the plane of the board entirely. But it does not, in a higher sense, cease to exist.

To capture the pawn, threaten the queen.

Personally, I don't believe in anything more supernatural than what you read about in the Bible, and I only believe that one day out of seven.

Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility.

Evolution can't be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it's a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn't aim.

Consciousness," according to current scientific thought, was something the higher mammals had evolved in order to help them reproduce, much the way a garden slug secretes slime. It had no special ontological status. The "self" was a genetically modulated and biologically useful illusion.