But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. - Margaret Atwood

More powerful than God, more evil than the Devil; the poor have it, the rich lack it, and if you eat it you die?

He told me that everyone had a hidden door, which was the way into the heart, and that it was a point of honour with him to be able to find the handles to those doors. For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny. Not, he hastened to add, that any man can really do that. Not even the gods, he said, were more powerful than the Three Fatal Sisters. He did not mention them by name, but spat to avoid bad luck; and i shivered to think of them in their glum cave, spinning out lives, measuring them, cutting them off.

The only sure camouflage was unpredictability.