“I came ashore, swimming and wading through turbulent water. It was early morning. The shore was muddy with engendering mud, and full of promise. It was the year 1923, and I was a young man of no more than a quarter of a century of physical years. I went up that muddy shore and entered into the green and burgeoning years of my life. If I remember to do it, I can come back to that same shore, and to that same year, and have another sixty green and burgeoning years to my life.

“Molasses is a little like amber,” Diogenes said. “It flows so slowly that sometimes it seems to be solid. Creatures can be imprisoned in it and apparently be held motionless in it. They must deceive themselves as to their own time scale, for if they do not deceive themselves they will be dead . . . . Things can not have been going on for the orthodox time at the orthodox pace.” — "Out of the Molasses Trap" “There are no duplications in the Pristine World, and there are no no

And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. “We won't be taken in by that, Mr. Sheen,” Hector O'Day said. “We're too smart for that.” “So was the little boy who got pulled all the way down to Hell nine years ago,” Anselm Sheen said. “He was a really smart boy. He reminds me of you, Hector.” Jack of diamonds, Jack of Diamonds, I’ve known you of old / You’ve robbed my poor pockets of silver

Yes, I believe that there will be a coming of Christ, an actual physical appearance, comprising the eternal incarnation, redemption, and resurrection. So did Christ believe this and repeated it many times. It is to be believed literally, down to every jot and tittle of every letter. Those who have had visions of the Coming (the First and Second coming are non-sequential aspects of the same event and are neither first nor second), those who have had apparently authentic vision

“You will hear it for yourselves, and it will surely fill you with wonder.” — Marco Polo, The Travels “All the voyages, whether to the moon or to worlds ten million times more distant, take about the same time to complete," the sea captain said. "When you use anti-geodetic force for propulsion, all places are equally close, all places are really only “six leagues from Lop. Come. It is a great enjoyment if you have not traveled to far places before!" What an unusual story “Six

" . . . just as Atrox devised one hundred and one tests by which one might know whether one was in a dream or in reality." In an interview, Michael Swanwick says something really interesting about Lafferty's novels. They are obscure not because of what they are, but because readers don’t yet have the reading protocols to decode them. The novels he has in mind often feature numerous characters (books like Arrive at Easterwine, The Elliptical Grave, and East of Laughter). As a