Jim’s Reviews > The Miracle Game > Status Update

[A]ll cultural officers [should] be sent urgent instructions recommending the following: a) that they make sure no concert orchestras use mutes, which deform the optimistic tone of the brass instruments, turning it into a painful wailing sound ; and b) that they use every means at their disposal to dissuade orchestra leaders from using saxophones of any kind, because of their hybrid, cosmopolitan, and decadent timbre

The noise outside sounded like a truck carrying a load of old garbage cans, and the scene might have come straight from one of Paternoster's novels. Out of the early morning mist, one after another, emerged a line of squat monsters [Russian tanks]. messengers of truth. Sitting on top of them in a cluster of automatic rifles ... were adolescents from the land of the bright future.

Nineteen, Comrade Sulc, I said to myself. Not twenty. That may be an important difference. Nineteen years and you still might hang for it. Twenty, and even murder comes under the statute of limitations. Not that I believe in the gallows. But I do believe this was murder.

If [God's] all knowing, He knows we're going to sin -- and then He punishes us for it even though He could easily arrange it so that we wouldn't sin in the first place, since He's all-powerful and all-loving. The way it is now, He comes out looking pretty mean.