Merry

“By the end of the war there was nothing about men and women that surprised him. Nothing about anything really. The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“There will be justice', said Brutha. 'If there is no justice, there is nothing'.
He was aware of a small voice in his head, too faint yet to distinguish words.
'Justice?' said Vorbis. The idea seemed to enrage him. He spun around to the crowd of bishops. 'Did you hear him? There will be justice? Om has judged! Through me! This is justice!'
There was a speck in the sun now, speeding towards the Citadel. And the little voice was saying left left left up up left right a bit left - The mass of metal under him was getting uncomfortably hot.
'He comes now', said Brutha.
Vorbis waved his hand to the great facade of the temple. 'Men built this. We built this', he said. 'And what did Om do? Om comes? Let him come! Let him judge between us!'
'He comes now', Brutha repeated. 'The God.'
People looked apprehensively upwards. There was that moment, just one moment, when the world holds its breath and against all experience waits for a miracle.
-up left now, when I say three, one, two, THREE-
'Vorbis?' croaked Brutha.
'What?' snapped the deacon.
'You're going to die.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“War is Man’s greatest fall from grace, of course, especially perhaps when we feel a moral imperative to fight it and find ourselves twisted into ethical knots. We can never doubt (ever) the courage of those men in the Halifaxes and Stirlings and Lancasters but the bombing war was undoubtedly a brutish affair, a crude method employing a blunt weapon, continually hampered by the weather and lack of technology (despite massive advances that war always precipitates). The large gap between what was claimed for the results of the bombing campaign and what was actually achieved was never fully understood at the time, and certainly not, I suspect, by those men flying the bombers.”
― Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins

“Teddy tried, in the manner of a simple layman, to keep up with theoretical physics, via articles in the Telegraph and an heroic struggle with Stephen Hawking in 1996, but admitted defeat when he came across string theory. From then on he took every day as it came, hour by hour.”
― Kate Atkinson