“Besides, what difference did if make if there had been two genuine coincidences? The universe was full of them. Every molecular collision was a coincidence. You could pile a thousand coincidences on top of another, he averred, and not get Tom Digby one step nearer to believing in the supernatural. Oh, he knew intelligent people enough, all right, who coddled such beliefs. Some of his best friends liked to relate “yarns” and toy with eerie possibilities for the sake of a thrill. But the only emotion Tom ever got out of such stuff was a nauseating disgust. It cut too deep for joking. It was a reversion to that primitive, fear-bound ignorance from which science had slowly lifted man, inch by inch, against the most bitter opposition.”

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation’s Edge (1982), Chapter 14 “Forward!” section 1, p. 281

“And a man’s mind insists on making patterns from random data.”
Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 102)

Clary and Simon, pg. 474
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Source: A Hunger Like No Other

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p. 50

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Source: Revelations

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928), Chapter Seven.