Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be

It's hard to be famous and alive.

...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.

God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, ie., everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

Raising the flag and singing the anthem are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason.