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Agnes was the worst prophet that's ever existed. Because she was always right. That's why the book never sold.
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Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
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So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –
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Simona Panova (Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew))
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A different word usually came to my mind when I thought of Yeva, though it did sound a lot like “witch.
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Richelle Mead (Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction)
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Fuck the weather forecasters and their predictions. With magic, he’d just turned their Doppler radar upside down.
Sapphire Phelan (Being Familiar With a Witch)
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Sapphire Phelan
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When you predicted an apocalypse, you needed sooner or later to produce one.
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Stacy Schiff (The Witches: Salem, 1692)
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Mary Beth considered the matter for a long time, and then explained in her simple straightforward manner that the future wasn’t predetermined, it was merely predictable.
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Anne Rice (The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches, #1))
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That was the problem with modern day witches , thought Corso : they didn't have any secrets . Everything was out in the open , you could read all about them in any Who's Who or gossip column . Baronesses or not , they had become predictable , vulgar . Torquemada would have been bored to death by it all .
”
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Arturo Pérez-Reverte (The Club Dumas)
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You hold the collective story of all women in your body. The muscle memory of generations past. This is your legacy, but it is not a prediction of your reality or your future. The difference is both delicate and profound and worth exploring. Pull in the wisdom of generations upon generations of witches and wild women and pioneers and mothers and lovers and midwives and subversives. And then forge your own path. The way only you can. You were born for this.
”
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Jeanette LeBlanc
“
Simple and predictable seem pretty darn tantalizing when you’re a witch.
Lately, I’ve wished for a lot of things to be the way they were. Gone are my lust
for the macabre and the sweetly sinful fantasies of meeting a vampire. Something
about unconscious people slumped against the dark leather of the booths at
crimson made it less sexy.
”
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Cyrese Covelli (Bloodcharm (Witchlock #4))
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Religious folk could be so deliciously predictable. He could set his watch by their hypocrisy.
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Ami McKay (The Witches of New York)
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Captain Vincent had explained patiently to the owners, whoever they were, that several hundred square meters of steel plating and a barrel of rivets would be a better investment, and had been informed that his recommendation did not accord with current cost / benefit flow predictions.
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Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
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On my analysis, misogyny’s primary function and constitutive manifestation is the punishment of “bad” women, and policing of women’s behavior. But systems of punishment and reward—and conviction and exoneration—tend to work together, holistically. So, the overall structural features of the account predict that misogyny as I’ve analyzed it is likely to work alongside other systems and mechanisms to enforce gender conformity. 7 And a little reflection on current social realities encourages pursuing this line of thinking, which would take the hostility women face to be the pointy, protruding tip of a larger patriarchal iceberg. We should also be concerned with the rewarding and valorizing of women who conform to gendered norms and expectations, enforce the “good” behavior of others, and engage in certain common forms of patriarchal virtue-signaling—by, for example, participating in slut-shaming, victim-blaming, or the Internet analog of witch-burning practices.
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Kate Manne (Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny)
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But developing your witch powers is not so much about predicting lottery numbers or knowing which tarot card means what. Instead, it’s about enhancing your sensitivity and response towards both random thoughts and direct, loaded truth bombs. It’s knowing what’s for you and what’s for other people, and learning how to make sense of emotional changes within your body.
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Lisa Lister (Witch: Unleashed. Untamed. Unapologetic.)
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It was the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, he reminded himself. He had heard many people say that on TV and on the outré video clips floating in cyberspace, which added a further, new-technology depth to his addiction. There were no rules any more. And in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, well, anything could happen. Old friends could become new enemies and traditional enemies could be your new besties or even lovers. It was no longer possible to predict the weather, or the likelihood of war, or the outcome of elections. A woman might fall in love with a piglet, or a man start living with an owl. A beauty might fall asleep and, when kissed, wake up speaking a different language and in that new language reveal a completely altered character. A flood might drown your city. A tornado might carry your house to a faraway land where, upon landing, it would squash a witch. Criminals could become kings and kings be unmasked as criminals. A man might discover that the woman he lived with was his father’s illegitimate child. A whole nation might jump off a cliff like swarming lemmings. Men who played presidents on TV could become presidents. The water might run out. A woman might bear a baby who was found to be a revenant god. Words could lose their meanings and acquire new ones. The world might end, as at least one prominent scientist- entrepreneur had begun repeatedly to predict. An evil scent would hang over the ending. And a TV star might miraculously return the love of a foolish old coot, giving him an unlikely romantic triumph which would redeem a long, small life, bestowing upon it, at the last, the radiance of majesty.
”
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Salman Rushdie (Quichotte)
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Yet we also have much in common with the period of the witch hunts, namely financial and social collapse born from environmental catastrophes of our own making. This provokes a need for an enemy, an invisible international pervasive conspiracy for us to unite against, vilify, torture, and ultimately murder. [...] Torture by the state continues, and yes, the executions and kill lists of enemies and innocents alike. It would not be inaccurate to call this a Catholic inquisition, it is part of the same extended franchise. We have simply replaced the Church with the Corporate State and I predict that a new witchcraft will rise to confront it, with many heads.
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Peter Grey (Apocalyptic Witchcraft)
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But Amanda ... ” Jadina said, looking past Maylin at the young Fate. “She doesn’t ask for anything. She doesn’t even try to read the future, it’s just there. She ends up blurting things out. Starts talking about the car accident you’re going to have in three years, or your baby boy dying in child birth in a few months, or your grandmother’s funeral next year. Thing’s you can’t change even if you know about them. Things you’re happier not knowing about. People go through life, happily oblivious. If you start telling them all the horrible things that are coming, they get upset. When those horrible things start coming true, they get scared and blame you. They say you caused it. Label you witch. Even burn you at the stake. She’s safer in there.
”
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Crissy Moss (Forgotten Ones (Eternal Tapestry))
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Efren’s mouth was busily chattering away, his body animated as though narrating some fascinating storybook adventure. The Braetic’s eyes were glued on the Viidun, sparked with interest.
“Betcha a meal Ef gets that necklace for the same purse of worthless coins Kira tried to trade,” Eena heard Kode whisper to his girlfriend.
“Betcha he pays up far more than that,” Niki whispered back.
“No way. He’s got the idiot eating out of his hands. Ef’s a freakin’ master!”
Right on cue came the predictable slap to the head.
“Ouch!”
Then the cursing. Followed by another smack.
“Sadistic witch!”
“Filthy bonehead.”
A minute of pouting silence ensued. “So you gonna bet me or what?”
“Yeah, I’ll take a free meal from you any day.”
“You’re on, Niki. Ef’s not givin’ up nothin’. He’ll have that necklace for the purse, if not for free.”
“You’re a fool if you believe that. That oversized, lovesick warrior’ll be givin’ up the shirt on his back for Kira’s necklace. You don’t understand Braetics, nor the powerful influence of true love.”
Eena could see Kode’s eyes roll to the back of his head. They all watched, wondering who would be right.
”
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Richelle E. Goodrich (Eena, The Tempter's Snare (The Harrowbethian Saga #5))
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The above is stereotypical FMS rhetoric. It employs a formulaic medley of factual distortions, exaggerations, emotionally charged language and ideological codewords, pseudo-scientific assertions, indignant protestations of bigotry and persecution, mockering of religious belief, and the usual tiresome “witch hunt” metaphors to convince the reader that there can be no debating the merits of the case. No matter what the circumstances of the case, the syntax is always the same, and the plot line as predictable as a 1920's silent movie. Everyone accused of abuse is somehow the victim of overzealous religious fanatics, who make unwarranted, irrational, and self-serving charges, which are incredibly accepted uncritically by virtually all social service and criminal justice professionals assign to the case, who are responsible for "brainwashing" the alleged perpetrator or witnesses to the crime. This mysterious process of "mass hysteria" is then amplified in the media, which feeds back upon itself, which finally causes a total travesty of justice which the FMS people in the white hats are duty-bound to redress. By reading FMS literature one could easily draw the conclusion that the entire American justice system is no better than that of the rural south in the days of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. The Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century are always the touchstone for comparison.
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Pamela Perskin Noblitt (Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century: Psychological, Forensic, Social, and Political Considerations)
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The Scientific Revolution was revolutionary in a way that is hard to appreciate today, now that its discoveries have become second nature to most of us. The historian David Wootton reminds us of the understanding of an educated Englishman on the eve of the Revolution in 1600: He believes witches can summon up storms that sink ships at sea. . . . He believes in werewolves, although there happen not to be any in England—he knows they are to be found in Belgium. . . . He believes Circe really did turn Odysseus’s crew into pigs. He believes mice are spontaneously generated in piles of straw. He believes in contemporary magicians. . . . He has seen a unicorn’s horn, but not a unicorn. He believes that a murdered body will bleed in the presence of the murderer. He believes that there is an ointment which, if rubbed on a dagger which has caused a wound, will cure the wound. He believes that the shape, colour and texture of a plant can be a clue to how it will work as a medicine because God designed nature to be interpreted by mankind. He believes that it is possible to turn base metal into gold, although he doubts that anyone knows how to do it. He believes that nature abhors a vacuum. He believes the rainbow is a sign from God and that comets portend evil. He believes that dreams predict the future, if we know how to interpret them. He believes, of course, that the earth stands still and the sun and stars turn around the earth once every twenty-four hours.7 A century and a third later, an educated descendant of this Englishman would believe none of these things. It was an escape not just from ignorance but from terror. The sociologist Robert Scott notes that in the Middle Ages “the belief that an external force controlled daily life contributed to a kind of collective paranoia”: Rainstorms, thunder, lightning, wind gusts, solar or lunar eclipses, cold snaps, heat waves, dry spells, and earthquakes alike were considered signs and signals of God’s displeasure. As a result, the “hobgoblins of fear” inhabited every realm of life. The sea became a satanic realm, and forests were populated with beasts of prey, ogres, witches, demons, and very real thieves and cutthroats. . . . After dark, too, the world was filled with omens portending dangers of every sort: comets, meteors, shooting stars, lunar eclipses, the howls of wild animals.8 To the Enlightenment thinkers the escape from ignorance and superstition showed how mistaken our conventional wisdom could be, and how the methods of science—skepticism, fallibilism, open debate, and empirical testing—are a paradigm of how to achieve reliable knowledge. That knowledge includes an understanding of ourselves.
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Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
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Here’s my long-term prediction for Long Now. When the Long Now audience of 2515 looks back on the audience of 2015, their level of contempt for how we go about judging political debate will be roughly comparable to the level of contempt we have for the 1692 Salem witch trials.
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Philip E. Tetlock
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When you’re a child you believe your parents know a special truth about the world, that they know what is right, and that life unfolds in a predictable manner. “That understanding does not get shaken unless something very dramatic happens. Then you see your parents are fallible humans making imperfect choices given their circumstances. There are no crystal balls like the witch had. In truth we are all much more like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. We are people pretending we have more skills than we do.
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Laila Ibrahim (Scarlet Carnation (Freedman/Johnson, #4))
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Perhaps our time here is limited," said Frex, sighing with contentment and clasping his arms behind his head - the typical male response to happiness, thought Melena: to predict its demise.
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Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
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Her answer makes me angry. How completely predictable, how infuriatingly boring that women with magic can be so easily intimidated by ordinary men with guns and matches. “How
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Sasha Peyton Smith (The Witch Haven (The Witch Haven, #1))
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I came out at 32.
Married my college sweetheart. Stay-at-home mama to 2 small children. Small town preacher's daughter living in a bubble of privilege she had no idea existed. Playgroups & sippy cups & easy predictability. An eternal restless, seeking edge telling me there was something more.
There was that life. It was good. Safe. Stable.
Then it was gone.
“How did you not know you were queer?”
My kids asked me this over the years. Their life in a sex-positive, queer-friendly, liberal utopian bubble made my lack of self-awareness utterly perplexing.
It is hard to know a thing when you are given no context for it.
You know there is a misfit, something not entirely right. But without options beyond compulsory heterosexuality & with a deep desire for approval, one does what one sees.
At least, that is what one does until one no longer can.
Being queer was like holding the golden ticket to a club nobody wanted to go to. I had no idea that once I blasted down those closet doors, with their bouncers of fear & religion & internal bias, the club would be lit. The way a party can be when everyone inside finally knows what it means to come home.
My queerness is a Tupperware container (thank god) that nobody will ever find a lid for. A box that cannot be closed. The reclamation of wholeness over goodness, transforming the perpetual misfit into one holy hell of a celebration.
Owning my queerness was like learning the desert floor was once the bottom of the ocean, meaning the towering 200-year-old saguaro watching over me was somehow born underwater.
It is the dogged insistence on coloring outside of every single line. It is the refusal to accept a singular definition that makes the word witch at me finally feel at home in the spaces where words are left behind.
My queerness rests its foundation on a ground named freedom. I speak it loudly because I have the freedom to do so without fear of reprisal or harm.
I claim this life of mine under the rainbow & the complexity of the history it has given me fiercely.
To love a woman in a world that said I must not will never be anything but a revolution.
And when I kiss her, trust me, entire galaxies are mine
”
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Jeanette LeBlanc
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It’s a premonition. It’s a possible future, but also a very probable future considering your skills. I’d bet on it. But nothing is certain. Nothing is in stone. That’s what makes predicting the future so frustrating.
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Lauren Quick (Witches in Wonderland (Sister Witches Mystery, #5))
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Feinstein’s fact-finding missions often verged on the ludicrous. An ardent opponent of the city’s growing porn industry, Feinstein decided she should go to an adult movie to see for herself what she was up against, dragging along another nice Jewish girl, Chronicle society columnist Merla Zellerbach, to a seedy theater. Predictably, Feinstein and her friend were horrified. On another occasion, Feinstein—determined to clean up the Tenderloin, the city’s drugged-out red-light district—put on a blond wig and stood on a street corner for three hours to learn more about the raunchy neighborhood.
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David Talbot (Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love)
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A boy who is impatient to grow up is wandering in a forest when a witch appears and gives him a ball with a golden thread sticking out of it. If he pulls the thread, she says, time will go faster. But he must use the device wisely, as the thread can no more easily be put back in than time can run backward. Predictably, the boy can’t help himself: impatient to go home from school, he pulls the thread; impatient to marry his crush, he pulls the thread; impatient to have a child, he pulls the thread. All too soon, he finds himself at the end of his life without the sensation of having lived it. The moral of the story is supposed to be about “living in the moment” and the folly of wanting to skip over the bad parts of life to get to the good ones. But when I read it, the thing I fixated on was the thread and the ball, simply as an illustration of the irreversibility of time. Even though it has a happy ending (the witch finds the old man and lets him live his life over again), I remembered this for a long time as a horror story.
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Jenny Odell (Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture)
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They could be like young witches sometimes, his daughters, with their black hair and sharp eyes. It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind. He’d had moments, in his marriage, when he’d almost feared Eileen and had envied her mettle, her red-hot instincts.
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Claire Keegan (Small Things Like These)
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Naturally, von Neumann’s picture of the player as a completely intelligent, completely ruthless person is an abstraction and a perversion of the facts. It is rare to find a large number of thoroughly clever and unprincipled persons playing a game together. Where the knaves assemble, there will always be fools; and where the fools are present in sufficient numbers, they offer a more profitable object of exploitation for the knaves. The psychology of the fool has become a subject well worth the serious attention of the knaves. Instead of looking out for his own ultimate interest, after the fashion of von Neumann’s gamesters, the fool operates in a manner which, by and large, is as predictable as the struggles of a rat in a maze. This policy of lies—or rather, of statements irrelevant to the truth—will make him buy a particular brand of cigarettes; that policy will, or so the party hopes, induce him to vote for a particular candidate—any candidate—or to join in a political witch hunt. A certain precise mixture of religion, pornography, and pseudoscience will sell an illustrated newspaper. A certain blend of wheedling, bribery, and intimidation will induce a young scientist to work on guided missiles or the atomic bomb. To determine these, we have our machinery of radio fan ratings, straw votes, opinion samplings, and other psychological investigations, with the common man as their object; and there are always the statisticians, sociologists, and economists available to sell their services to these undertakings.
Luckily for us, these merchants of lies, these exploiters of gullibility, have not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection as to have things all their own way. This is because no man is either all fool or all knave. The average man is quite reasonably intelligent concerning subjects which come to his direct attention and quite reasonably altruistic in matters of public benefit or private suffering which are brought before his own eyes. In a small country community which has been running long enough to have developed somewhat uniform levels of intelligence and behavior, there is a very respectable standard of care for theunfortunate, of administration of roads and other public facilities, of tolerance for those who have offended once or twice against society. After all, these people are there, and the rest of the community must continue to live with them. On the other hand, in such a community, it does not do for a man to have the habit of overreaching his neighbors. There are ways of making him feel the weight of public opinion. After a while, he will find it so ubiquitous, so unavoidable, so restricting and oppressing that he will have to leave the community in self-defense.
”
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Norbert Wiener (Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine)
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There were no rules any more. And in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, well, anything could happen. Old friends could become new enemies and traditional enemies could be your new besties or even lovers. It was no longer possible to predict the weather, or the likelihood of war, or the outcome of elections. A woman might fall in love with a piglet, or a man start living with an owl. A beauty might fall asleep and, when kissed, wake up speaking a different language and in that new language reveal a completely altered character. A flood might drown your city. A tornado might carry your house to a faraway land where, upon landing, it would squash a witch. Criminals could become kings and kings be unmasked as criminals. A man might discover that the woman he lived with was his father’s illegitimate child. A whole nation might jump off a cliff like swarming lemmings. Men who played presidents on TV could become presidents. The water might run out. A woman might bear a baby who was found to be a revenant god. Words could lose their meanings and acquire new ones. The world might end, as at least one prominent scientist-entrepreneur had begun repeatedly to predict. An evil scent would hang over the ending. And a TV star might miraculously return the love of a foolish old coot, giving him an unlikely romantic triumph which would redeem a long, small life, bestowing upon it, at the last, the radiance of majesty.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Quichotte)
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I would really like to keep living.” “Yeah?” Randy pounced. “How would you like to live… forever?” Unfortunately, his offer had the opposite of its intended effect, as I immediately and permanently died. The undeterred Randy proceeded to explain to my corpse that Christmas isn’t real and the Bible predicted that the earth was round, which was proof that the Bible was scientific fact. This went on for the next twenty minutes, during which Randy got lost twice as he was apparently proselytizing too hard to look at the GPS. It was less a ride share and more a low-grade kidnapping for which I was being charged. To his credit, though, it did feel like eternity.
”
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Lindy West (The Witches are Coming)