“You know those games where this ball runs up and bounces around and ends up in a slot at the bottom?”
“Pinball machines?”
“Is that what they’re called now?”
“I think so.”
“Oh. Right.” The Alderman nodded. “Well…when you’re bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there’s a room and outside the room there’s a town and outside the town there’s a country and outside the country there’s a world and outside the world there’s a billion trillion stars and that’s only the start of it…but it’s there, you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worrying about the slot in the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.”
from Johnny And The Dead, my favourite Terry Pratchett book of all time