Call it: joy. The thing like pleasure that you feel when you've done a good thing or passed up a real tempting chance to do a bad thing. Or when the unfolding of the universe just seems especially apt. It's nowhere near as flashy and intense as pleasure can be. Believe me! But it's got something going for it. Something that can make you do without pleasure, or even accept a lot of pain, to get it.

Man has historically devoted much more subtle and ingenious thought to inflicting cruelty than to giving others pleasure - which, given his gregarious nature, …

'It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talkin…

'God is an iron,' I said. 'Did you know that?' I turned to look at her and she was staring. She laughed experimentally, stopped when I failed to join in. 'And …