(There are three stages to a battle: First you’re bored. Then you’re terrified. Then you’re dead. Each is necessary, and they must all come in the pr… - Michael Swanwick

Your system works fine in theory. But things are different in the real world."
"I'm going to move to Theory some day," Chuck said. "Everything works there.

“Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.

You have to spell things out for the press—you can’t rely on them to know even the simplest things.