Now, we take James Bond’s brain out of his head, and we put Vat Bond’s brain in the cranium of that athletic de-brained body. That won’t help bin Laden: Just as the original Bond would have daringly done, Vat Bond will soon unearth the terrorist.

Suppose that, at a certain time, certain very numerous elementary particles wholly compose a certain copper table, Carl. But, then, all Carl’s copper is pushed through an extruder and, out the other side, there gradually appears a very long and skinny copper wire.

“I’m not tuning in the way I used to and something’s wrong with me,” said a woman who took “the chair” on Sunday. “There are larger things going on here, but I don’t have any evidence. I’m just not sure.”

“When you know the truth, you need no evidence,” Mr. de Ruiter replied after a long pause.

“I mean this in a kind way,” the woman said, “but my real self doesn’t have a foggy clue about what’s going on here and will never be able to figure it out.”

“You don’t need to understand what you know for you to believe in what you know,” said Mr. de Ruiter.

There was more cryptic banter and the woman seemed to come around. “All I know is that something’s happening and that’s enough,” she said.

The guru spoke: “If you knew that you were going to die in one minute, you would say that you’re ready now.”

Three minutes passed.

“Yes,” the woman agreed.

Then more silence.

When children take a standardized test shortly after a neighborhood murder, their scores suffer.

Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence.

Right Honourable and Worshipfull, and you of all degrees; it hath euer beene a common custome amongst Idle, and humerous Poets, Pamphleters, and Rimers, out of passionate discontents, or hauing little otherwise to imploy themselues about, to write some bitter Satire-Pamphlet, or Rime, against women: in which argument he who could deuise any thing more bitterly, or spitefully, against our sexe, hath neuer wanted the liking, allowance, and applause of giddy headed people.

“This is no time for word games, Osmond,” says Humphrey, pale in the doom screens’ glow.

“Our world is ending and there’s nothing we can do about it.  This is precisely the time for word games.”

A team of researchers in Australia and New Zealand, led by paleobiologist Alexander Boast, extracted DNA from 23 ancient dung samples. These samples, called coprolites, ranged between 124 and 1,557 years old, and they came from three different species of moa and the kakapo, New Zealand’s fuzzy, befuddled-looking, and critically endangered flightless parrot.

Sex in turn is no doubt meant to be equated with fundamental truth, although by this date such an idea seems terribly tired and cannot be easily accepted.

Sanchez’ sixth novel explores environmental rage and redemptive struggle in the riveting drama of a mysterious voodoo assassin who upturns the lives of a crusading pirate radio shock jock and an enigmatic female cop who holds the ultimate key to startling truth.