“Protein, so far as we know, does not replicate itself all by itself, not on this planet anyway. Looked at this way, the [prion] seems the strangest thing in all biology, and, until someone in some laboratory figures out what it is, a candidate for Modern Wonder. (quote originally by Lewis Thomas)”

“One is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally. In the hearing of the gods, who hear all, it is conversely unsage to make a simple and direct statement. So what is one to do? The dilema needs a whole volume to itself.”

“Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do.”

“Middling monsters died at the point of pitchforks, burned with torches, or at the butt of silver-capped canes wielded by angry, geriatric Poles. Middling people were dime-a-dozen, emptied souls, shorn sheeple, human husks. A good monster didn’t worry about what it was doing; it just did it. A true predator didn’t worry about guilt, or being popular, or anything. It just cruised along, living for the kill, surviving. A good person, well, she’d put a bullet in her head or weigh her feet down and throw herself into the Chicago River, holding her breath until she went to the sludgy, filthy bottom, and had to open wide and breathe water until she died.”

“How few things good fortune prizes!'Yes, the day you are fortunate is also the day when you are the most unfortunate, for in good fortune you cannot imagine what suffering is.”

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

“...So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how they came to be this. I know, who doesn't do that, right? Who doesn't look at one of those things and just naturally start to wonder? It's like reading the last page of a book... your imagination just naturally spinning. And that's when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your guard down and end up leaving someone else to wonder what happened to you.”