Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks.

How do you define God? Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.

Do you think it's possible that things that seem to be discrete in three dimensions might all be part of the same bigger object in four dimensions? ...What if humanity- that collective noun we so often employ- really is, at a higher level, a singular noun? What it what we perceive in three dimensions as seven billion individual human beings are really all just aspects of one giant being?

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?

It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?