[b]Neil Gaiman
She’s realized the real problem with stories – if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.[/b]
Or the author does.
Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.
Actually, at the time, I didn’t.
I am not scared of bad people, of wicked evildoers, of monsters and creatures of the night. The people who scare me are the ones who are certain of their own rightness. The ones who know how to behave, and what their neighbors need to do to be on the side of the good.
If only this could go without saying.
There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life. These are wine, women and song.
Or, sure, three other things.
There are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing they could do would be to hasten their transition to another plane of existence.
They kill themselves, you mean? said Bod.
Indeed.
Does it work? Are they happier dead?
Sometimes. Mostly, no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
And surely that includes here.
You’ll think this is a bit silly, but I’m a bit–well, I have a thing about birds.
What, a phobia?
Sort of.
Well, that’s the common term for an irrational fear of birds.
What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?
Are there rational reasons?