Zodiac

The big lie of American capitalism is that corporations work in their own best interests. In fact they're constantly doing things that will eventually bring them to their knees. Most of these blunders involve toxic chemicals that any competent chemist should know to be dangerous. They pump these things into the environment and don't even try to protect themselves. The evidence is right there in public, almost as if they'd printed up signed confessions and sprinkled them out of airplanes. Sooner or later, someone shows up in a Zodiac and points to that evidence, and the result is devastation far worse than what a terrorist, a Boone, could manage with bombs and guns.

from Zodiac
by Neal Stephenson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988

Cloud 8

No such day or miracle happened, of course. From the first priest who held my mom's hand in the first hospital room to the last in the last, disease took its own course, unabated by any torrent of words or holy water. The priests and preachers (even a rabbi once) delivered their words in the unequivocal form of a promise, and when that promise was so clearly not fulfilled, it seemed that each had a ready-made explanation handy for this obvious lack of results. "God works in mysterious ways," etc.

from Cloud 8
by Grant Bailie
Ig Publishing, 2003