It seems to me sometimes all beauty is dying. Which makes me hope that perhaps it isn't dead but only sleeping. And that makes me think of Sleeping B… - Sheri S. Tepper

The extent of my ignorance oppresses me.

One of the difficulties of being the good guys is that even open societies have to have secret police, and secret police turn toward repression as a compass points north.

The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world. It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.
“Holy fruit of St. Phallus,” he said.
“Clean seed planted in filthy ground,” he said.
“Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,” he said.