Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.

He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.

There's some things that you wouldn't tackle in a children's book because it would be beyond, not the mental capabilities, but the experience of someone under the age of say ten or eleven to encompass. But that field is smaller than you might think. They can easily cope with death and things like that; they know about it and it's a subject that often preoccupies them.

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.