When you can't depend on the Devil, who can you depend on? - R. A. Lafferty

When very young, Hannali would sit on the black ground and chuckle till it was feared he would injure himself. Whatever came over him, prenatal witticism or ancestral joke, he seldom was able to hold his glee. In all his life he never learned to hold it in.

Roadstrum had a way of putting it on a little thick himself. "Be there a man among you who doubts my demesne or destiny, then I have fared in vain," he said. "I bare my throat to the treacherous steel —" "All right, all right," the three tough crewmen capitulated. We're with you all the way and in everything. Only spare us the 'act.'"

You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only. If you are not serious now, by hell you'll get serious pretty quick!