We are all either conditioned by belief system or consciousness. Belief system is built through the world, consciousness is built from within.

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. __ have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I__ sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature__ wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that__ when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

I am not scoffing at goodness, which is far more difficult to explain than evil, and just as complicated. But sometimes it's hard to put up with.

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

I doubt you would recognize an adventure of any sort if it came right up and bit you on the a---Mother!I was going to say arm.

Writers are much better behaved nowadays, for a couple of reasons. Once upon a time nobody was thinking of a career, unless you lived in New York, so there wasn__ as much pressure to present a respectable exterior. And secondly, there was no social media. So if you were found face down on the floor _ people did do that quite a bit; usually men, but not always _ or fell through plate glass windows or got into scrapes, it became a rumour, and rumours are hard to pin down.