Why get so worked up about a nonexistent threat? Answer: someone somew — Tom Holt

"It may not be true, but it provides a much-needed focal point for baffled indignation."

"Malcolm listened to her laughter, and for the first time in his life he knew that everything was going to be all right. Niceness, he realized, it was not enough, and Love was only part of the rest. You had to have laughter, too. Laughter would make everything come out right in the end, or if it didn’t nobody would notice."

"“It was basically a form of gambling, and it went something like this. “The Fuggers would think of something that was extremely unlikely to happen, and then they would persuade someone to wager them money that it would. Now the proper term for this arrangement is a sucker bet, but the Fuggers wanted to find a respectable name for it, so they called it Insurance. It caught on, just as they knew it would, and soon it became so respectable that they were able to get people to make a new bet every year, and they called this sort of bet a premium.”"

"“So youve never had any urge to rule the world, or anything like that?” “What, me?” Vanderdecker said. “No, I cant say I have. It would be nice to change some things, naturally.” Jane leaned forward and looked serious. “Such as?” Vanderdecker considered. “I dont know,” he said, “now you come to mention it. I cant actually think of anything that even remotely matters. You get such a wonderful sense of perspective at my age.”"

"On the way out, I reflected on the way in which so many mortals pray. It’s strictly a rational proposition. If He exists, they argue, it’s best to be on the right side of Him; if He doesn’t, well, no harm done, it hasn’t cost anything. I’m not like that, unfortunately. Either I believe or I don’t. And I believed—thought I believed—in the doctrines of Saloninus concerning the invalidity of conventional morality. I believed that there are no absolutes of good and evil and that all that matters, in the final analysis, is which side you’re on. It was, I felt, a doctrine which accorded exactly with my own observations and experience. The problems start when your side isn’t on your side anymore."

"He knew of course that there was such a thing as love, and that if you happen to come across it, as most people seem to do, it is not a thing that you can avoid, or that you should want to avoid. But you cannot go out and find it, because it is not that sort of creature. The phrase “to fall in love,” he realized, is a singularly apt one; it is something you blunder into, like a pothole. Very like a pothole."