“The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on the slates. "What are they doing?" Alice whispered to the Gryphon. "They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.""They're putting down their names," the Gryphon whispered in reply, "for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.”

“What is his sorrow?' She asked the Gryphon. And the Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, 'It's all his fancy, that: he hasn't got no sorrow, you know'.”

“The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.”

“How was your day?” she whispered.“It went as expected,” he said. “Mostly. No one died. All of the sentinels went through to the next round, but then nobody believed anything different would occur. Graydon—” His gold eyes danced suddenly. “You know what a big motherfucker Graydon is. He turned into a gryphon, and then he just sat down and looked at his opponent, who forfeited. It was the fastest bout of the day.”

“You can put a man on trial, but you can't make the guilty pay.”

“Everything will happen as was written by the Lord," replied the prophet. "There are moments when tribulations occur in our lives, and we cannot avoid them. But they are there for some reason.""What reason?""That is a question we cannot answer before, or even during the trials. Only when we have overcome them do we understand why they were there.”