Words are the litmus paper of the mind.

Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.

And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.

Granddad was superstitious about books. He thought that if you had enough of them around, education leaked out, like radioactivity.