The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. … - R. A. Lafferty

Now then, I have given you a short fair hearing as the law requires. I do not solicit the support of your party, though, in all honesty, if it had more than one member I might.

"You believe, in one of your theories, that we're in control of the world. We aren't. But we have been, and we will be whenever we wish. It's a day you will fear to see, that we come fully awake again. And we do come awake now. We will regain the world. Certain later interlopers have for some time ruled heaven and earth. Now we come back — ruthlessly."
"Don't you believe the others also have rights?"
"The others have had the run of their rights long enough. They are the interlopers, and it's time that the ancient line is restored. — Oh, Foley, I misunderstood you completely; that's always the difficulty of conversing with infants. You mean PEOPLE. You mean do people have any rights? Oh no, I don't believe that people have any rights."

The art of story-telling has not been declining from the beginning. It has been declining for only about twelve thousand years. One reason for the decline is a dietary deficiency: the scarcity of Wooly Rhinoceros Meat and of Dire Wolf Meat. And the other reason is the disappearance of good places where good stories may be told.