The thing that is called ‘mainstream fiction’ is an invalid masquerade of the world. It wears masks identical to the faces under the masks; it wears … - R. A. Lafferty

When Dotty learned of Keen’s advent she was desolate, but in her own fashion. Dotty’s emotions were in rational balance and larded with enough humor to keep them from sticking to the pan. The insistence that humor is the core of the soul, even in the middle of trial and tragedy, stayed with Dotty through all the months that followed, which were filled with shock after shock. She tried to fight back with prayer, patience, exposition, common sense, murder, flight, but also with humor. Always with humor.

Hold! Go no further!” upset people cry out. “You are coming too near to the subject named ‘religion’!”
Yes, ‘Religion’ is one of the taboo words that modern science fictioneers may not think nor say, unless they use it to mean something else. The selective speculation which they are allowed will not stretch far enough to allow religion itself, not far enough to see that we have passed the Isthmus and have only to take off our handcuffs and blindfolds to be free. In this, the narrowness, Science Fiction stands where much science stood a hundred years ago and where almost all pseudo-science still stands today.

The lad knew a trick for see­ing things in their right size in­stead of in the il­lu­sion that they pro­ject.