I let the book fall open where it would. As it happened, it fell open to the chapter about the island's outlawed holy man, Bokonon.

There was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there.

The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's."

Bokonon's paraphrase was this:

"Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on."

—Kurt Vonnegut. Cat's Cradle (1963).