By all means let us consult your needs! So long as they overlap precisely with my needs, I’m sure we can accommodate them. - Adam Roberts

Are we in a dream?" Lebret asked. "Might we actually be dead and in some afterlife?"
"How could we test either supposition?" the scientist asked, with characteristic practical-mindedness. "What conceivable experiment could we design to falsify such a claim?

Have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America?

That a human being had died did not distress her. Had it been somebody she knew it would have upset her; she wasn’t a monster. Had it been somebody she cared about. But it was nobody she knew, and it would have been disingenuous to pretend that the death of somebody she didn’t know affected her on an emotional level.