This is what makes magic so difficult: The magician must sell people a lie even as they know they're being lied to. Unless the illusion feels more real than the truth, there is no magic.

"Do you know," he said, "you interest me immensely? You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?"

"No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social 'bye-laws'--the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together--and we get frightened at the prevalence of 'sin' and 'evil.' But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of our day?

"Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the 'sin' of meddling with our pockets (and our wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin."

"And what is sin?" said Cotgrave.

"I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

"Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is."

TEACHER
...prostaglandins are useful to bring on labor as well, and one of the ways to release those is during intercourse, having orgasms--

ALL OF US
*nod thoughtfully*

TEACHER'S BRAIN
Oh noes! I meant to be referring specifically to semen without having to actually SAY semen. Except I have lesbians here! I must be inclusive of them. How to address this...

TEACHER
*turns and smiles at us* And of course, even if you don't have a male partner, there are ways you can have the same sort of, um, release of these chemicals.

CASS AND BETH
PLEASE DO CONTINUE DISCUSSING OUR SEX LIVES IN FRONT OF THE CLASS THIS IS NOT AWKWARD AT ALL.

TEACHER
Different methods you can use to achieve the same ends...

CASS AND BETH
*die*

EVERYBODY ELSE
*sympathy death*

Have you ever had (or met someone else who had) an odd, almost supernatural experience?

Let us say I am writing a short story, and I need a couple more odd occurrences to round out my own. Would you mind terribly if I stole yours?

Either which way, tell me a story?

[...] so she left it to him to start a fresh subject.

He did so, courteously enough, by asking how the new novel was getting on.

"It's gone sticky."

"What's happened to it?"

This involved a full rehearsal of the plot of Death 'twixt Wind and Water. It was a complicated story, and the punt had covered a good deal of water before she reached the solution.

"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that," said he; and proceeded to offer a few suggestions about detail.

"How intelligent you are, Peter. You're quite right. Of course that would be the best way to get over the clock difficulty. But why does the whole story sound so dead and alive?"

"If you ask me," said Wimsey, "it's Wilfrid. I know he marries the girl -- but must he be such a mutt? Why does he go and pocket the evidence and tell all those unnecessary lies?"

"Because he thinks the girl's done it."

"Yes -- but why should he? He's dotingly in love with her -- he thinks she's absolutely the cat's pajamas -- and yet, merely because he finds her handerkerchief in the bedroom, he is instantly convinced, on evidence that wouldn't hang a dog, that she not only is Winchester's mistress but has also murdered him in a peculiarly diabolical way. That may be one way to love, but--"

"But, you would like to point out, it isn't yours -- and in fact, it wasn't yours."

There it was again -- the old resentment, and the impulse to hit back savagely for the pleasure of seeing him wince.

"No," he said, "I was considering the problem impersonally."

"Academically, in fact."

"Yes -- please.... From a purely constructional point of view, I don't feel that Wilfrid's behavior is sufficiently accounted for."

"Well," said Harriet, recovering her poise, "academically speaking, I admit that Wilfrid is the world's worst goop. But if he doesn't conceal the handkerchief, where's my plot?"

"Couldn't you make Wilfrid one of those morbidly conscientious people, who have been brought up to think that anything pleasant must be wrong -- so that, if he wants to believe the girl an angel of light she is, for that very reason, all the more likely to be guilty. Give him a puritanical father and a hell-fire religion."

"Peter, that's an idea."

"He has, you see, a gloomy conviction that love is sinful in itself, and that he can only purge himself by taking the young woman's sins upon him and wallowing in vicarious suffering.... He'd still be a goop, and a pathological goop, but he would be a bit more consistent."

"Yes -- he'd be interesting. But if I give Wilfrid all those violent and lifelike feelings, he'll throw the whole book out of balance."

"You would have to abandon the jigsaw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change."

"I'm afraid to try that, Peter. It might go too near the bone."

"It might be the wisest thing you could do."

"Write it out and get rid of it?"

"Yes."

"I'll think about that. It would hurt like hell."

"What would that matter, if it made a good book?"

CAMILLA: You sir, should unmask.

STRANGER: Indeed?

CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

STRANGER: I wear no mask.

CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

-The King in Yellow: Act 1-Scene 2d.