It’s not a matter of who runs first or who runs last. It’s merely a matter of who gets caught. - Avram Davidson

Things oughtn’t to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.

Everything meant something, still, some meanings were revealed sooner than others. And that some were seemingly never revealed in no way disproved the fact.

Things were seldom what they seemed. People feared to tempt powers spiritual or temporal or illegal by displays of well being, and the brick screens in from of (or behind, depending on whether one were going in or going out) the doors blocked both the gaze of the curious and the path of demons. Demons can travel only in straight lines; it is the sons of men whose ways are devious.