This short history should have something to satisfy every taste and perversion: action, treachery, fratricide and regicide, corruption, and bloodshed… - R. A. Lafferty

For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club," whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. "For all other crimes we give asylum, for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum.

Half a century went by. Clarence Big-Saddle called his son. ‘I’ve had it, boy,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just go in the house and die.’ ‘OK, Dad,’ the son Clarence Little-Saddle said. ‘I’m going in to town to shoot a few games of pool with the boys. I’ll bury you when I get back this evening.

It is said that — Arcadius having offered its weight in gold for the head of Gainas — King Uldin drew out the brains of Gainas and poured in molten lead to win a better bargain with his prize. This part of the story has been doubted, and for no better reason than that it had been told five hundred years earlier of the head of Gaius Gracchus — as though a good trick might not be pulled more than once.