The apple which tempts my characters is the one that will remove the knowledge of good and evil. I suppose it's something of a reversal of the conventional Eden story: Freedom of thought is perhaps the greatest good, and needs to be fought for and sacrificed for.

He said, speaking more to himself than to me: 'It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.' And do you not find it,' I asked, 'this knowledge which you prize?' In part,' he said. 'I find other things, too. Things I do not desire but must accept. There is still cheating and deceiving.

We had been friends. We could not become strangers. It left only one thing: we must be enemies.

Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it.

Truth does not surround itself with lies.