'...He saw through their lies and promises, but he also knew that they spoke to something nasty and squalid in the human spirit. Something in all of us, We want to hate those who are not like us. All we need is an excuse, a whisper in the ear.'

   'Not all of us,' Floyd said.

 'That's what a lot of good people said in the thirties,' Marguerite replied. 'That the message of hatred would only be heeded by the ignorant and those who were already filled with bile. But it wasn't like that. It took strength of mind not to let yourself be poisoned by those lies, and not everyone had that strength. Even fewer people had the courage to do something about it; to actually stand up to the hatemongers.'

   'Was your husband one of those brave people?' Floyd asked.

   'No,' she said. 'He wasn't. He was one of the millions who said and did nothing, and that's how he went to his grave.'

Alastair Reynolds(1966-): Century Rain(2004), 108-109.

Experiments suggest that as the night wears on our dreams engage increasingly earlier material from our past, reaching back to childhood and infancy. At the same time the primary process and emotional content of the dream also increase. We are much more likely to dream of the passions of the cradle just before awakening than just after falling asleep. This looks very much as if the integration of the day's experience into our memory, the forging of new neural links, is either an easier or a more urgent task. As the night wears on and this function is completed, the more affecting dreams, the more bizarre material, the fears and lusts and other powerful emotions of the dream material emerge. Late at night, when it is very still and the obligatory daily dreams have been dreamt, the gazelles and the dragons begin to stir.

Carl Sagan(1934-1996): The Dragons of Eden(1977), 154-155.