The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all – no one's around to write horror stories.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.