Q: Why do I have to ask the questions?
A: Do you think that is the question to ask?
—Geof Huth, personal correspondence

"Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die. It compensates for the reverses and frustrations real life inflicts on us, and because of it we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings, principally those of us who generate more doubts than certainties and confess our perplexity before subjects like transcendence, individual and collective destiny, the soul, the sense or senselessness of history, the to and fro of rational knowledge." —Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel lecture, "In Praise of Reading and Fiction," Dec. 7, 2010

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Angelic. "Her Angel whispered to her, 'The Master has need of thee.'" —"Flowers for a Child’s Grave," The Irish Monthly, Eighth Yearly Volume, 1880, p. 552. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Is it true, as Momus suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"?  Decide for yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWNUPS by Anne Tyler

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. Suddenly, a shot rang out.

"'Science is systematized and formulated knowledge.'  Then anybody who has systematized and formulated knowledge enough to appear, on time, at the breakfast table, is, to that degree, a scientist.  There are scientific dogs.  Most of them have a great deal of systematized and formulated knowledge.  Cats and rabbits and all those irritating South American rodents that were discovered by cross-word puzzle-makers are scientists.  A magnet scientifically picks out and classifies iron filings from a mass of various materials.  Science does not exist, as a distinguishable entity."
—Charles Fort, Wild Talents

A fate worse than death:

"It wasn't the dying.  He had seen men die all his life, and death was the luck of the chance, the price you eventually paid.  What was worse was the stupidity.  The appalling sick stupidity that was so bad you thought sometimes you would go suddenly, violently, completely insane just having to watch it."
—Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Angelic. "Some good angel whispered to me, 'Go, and look in the glass.'" —Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1874, p. 335. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)