A God capable of continuously monitoring and controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple. His existence is going to need a mammoth explanation in its own right.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.

If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.

I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.

Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.