Robinson 352: "Words are gossamer in a world of granite. [...] But what else did they have? The world runs by laws and treaties, or so it sometimes seems; so one can hope; the granite of the careening world, held in gossamer nets. And if one were to argue that the world actually runs by way of guns in your face, as Mao so trenchantly pointed out, still, the guns often get aimed by way of laws and treaties. If you give up on sentences you end up in a world of gangsters and thieves and naked force, hauled into the street at night to be clubbed or shot or jailed."
"So the people who fought for sentences [...] were doing the best they could think of to avoid that world of bare force and murder in the night."