The conversation had begun nicely, but precisely because it was much too nice, it stopped again. They had to resort to that sure, never failing remedy - malicious gossip.

What is truly strange is that I, who spared not only innocent lives but several guilty ones as well (for at certain moments I was overcome by a kind of indifference, and the prisoners reaped the benefits), was hated even more than some of my comrades .... I think the prisoners condemned to death vaguely consoled themselves with the idea that they were dealing with madmen or monsters; whereas I was an ordinary, sad little man who coughed, wore glasses, had a little snub nose and delicate hands.

Eliminate the unjust for the good of the majority.

The gunman is useless. I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it. Even my best mate, Marvin, knows it, and he's more useless than the gunman. The worst part about the whole thing is that Marv's car is standing outside in a fifteen-minute parking zone. We're all facedown on the floor, and the car's only got a few minutes left on it.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Han tenkte at hvis de ville drepe ham også, ville han sannsynligvis slippe å bli korsfestet, fordi det var en gammeldags metode. Derimot kunne han enten bli skutt eller hengt. Rutja prøvde å tenke seg en altertavle med et bilde av sin egen kropp dinglende i en galge der bildet av Jesus hang nå. Det var deprimerende å tenke sånn.

Rutja stakk lommeboka i lomma. "Den handelsmannen må være nokså tett i potta, når han bytter mat mot et papir. Men kanskje det også er en av de nye finske skikkene."

"Heldigvis er jeg gud og ikke forfatter," sukket Rutja lettet.

Perhaps these poor devils have never stopped to think about the slow sequence of torment that the swift, efficient wording of the death sentence entails? Have they ever had a moment's pause at the heart-rending idea that inside the man whose head they are severing there is a mind; a mind that was expecting to live, a soul that wasn't the least prepared for death? No. All they see is the downwards motion of a triangular blade, and probably believe that for the condemned man there is nothing before or afterwards.

Noen mulighet for å overleve kunne ikke Uula love busspassasjerene. Det syntes de var betryggende.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

It is normally thought that conservatives are most commonly the old, while the innovators are the young. This is not entirely true. Conservatives are most commonly the young. The young, who want to live, but who do not think about, and do not have the time to think about how they should live, and who therefore select as a model for themselves the life that used to be.

The example of a syllogism that he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic: Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal, had throughout his whole life seemed to him right only in relation to Caius, but not to him at all.

There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.

This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell.

I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

He lay down and rolled into the shallow drainage ditch where the grass dipped before going under the fence. His coat was green. If he lay still they might not find him. It was snug in the ditch, and surprisingly comfortable. Interesting, too, to find himself looking at nature from so close up, something he had not done since he was a small boy. There must have been forty or fifty species of plants within his reach. And he knew the names of none. Except the nettles. Assuming they were nettles. And the cow parsley. Assuming it was cow parsley.