Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a... - Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"What intrigued me more than anything else was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation - all of it! - was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn't see it in our own world, there was a real stability."