There are the stars--doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.
I am my own judge of what truths I shall tell. The truth can do just as much harm as a lie.
A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.