As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.

Our universe was created to perpetuate creation, it was not created to perpetuate consumption.

Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.

It is difficult to live in and enjoy the moment when you are thinking about the past or worrying about the future.

If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself_ and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.

I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.