In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

There are only about a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference in any area of our lives.

Jim Rohn

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

William Shakespeare

We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.

Alexander McCall Smith

The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.

Roland Barthes

One to destroy, is murder by the law and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.

Edward Young

A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her.

Helen Rowland

Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.

Marcel Proust

Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.

Charles Horton Cooley

Los Angeles is like a beauty parlor at the end of the universe.

Emily Mortimer

Everybody has a gun in their car in Detroit.

Jim Harrison

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 -- 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go.

Robert M. Pirsig