Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century. - Connie Willis

You shouldn’t be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that’s what science is all about.

Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked.
Whatever it was, it was not granted.

It doesn’t matter, she thought, and realized in spite of everything, horror after horror, Roche still believed in God. He had been going to the church to say matins when he found the steward, and if they all died, he would go on saying them and not find anything incongruous in his prayers.