"The stupidity surplus," repeated Landen as he sat down at the kitchen table, "I'm all for responsible government, but storing it up like this is bou… - Jasper Fforde

"Dead," muttered Mycroft with a resigned air. "Never been that before. Not even once. Are you quite sure?"

"'Tis very strange!" he murmured, staring at the sun, trees, houses and traffic in turn. "It would take a rhapsody of wild and whirling words to do justice of all that I witness!"
"You're going to have to speak English out here."
"All this," explained Hamlet, waving his hands at the fairly innocuous Swindon street, "would take millions of words to describe correctly!"
"You're right. It would. That's the magic of the book imagino-transference technology," I told him. "A few dozen words conjure up an entire picture. But in all honesty the reader does most of the work."
"The reader? What's it got to do with him?"
"Well, each interpretation of an event, setting or character is unique to each of those who read it because they clothe the author's description with the memory of their own experiences. Every character they read is actually a complex amalgam of people that they've met, read or seen before—far more real than it can ever be just from the text on the page. Because every reader's experiences are different, each book is unique for each reader."

Rescue seemed a very remote possibility, and that was at the nub of the whole ethical-dilemma argument. You never come out on top, no matter what. The only way to win the game is not to play.