I see death as the worm's opportunity. It is defeat. You can dress it as you like, with drama, or glory, or pomposity, and perhaps deceive yourself f… - John Wyndham

An open mind is a difficult thing to keep.

There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes. The ways of the world were very puzzling. . . .

It boils down to this. If a man, any man, claims to have had an experience which is outside all normal experience, it will be inferred, will it not, that he is in some way not quite a normal man? A small cloud, a mere wrack, of doubt and risk begins to gather above him. It is tenuous, too insubstantial for him to disperse, yet it casts a faint, persistent shadow. There is, I imagine, no such thing as a normal human being, but there is a widespread feeling that there ought to be. Any organisation has a conception of 'the type of man we want here' which is regarded as the normal for its purposes. So every man there attempts more or less to accord to it - organisational man, in fact - and anyone who diverges more than slightly from the type in either his public, or in his private life does so to the peril of his career.