“You can't live in dread of something for long without beginning to crave it.”

“I didn't cry. Real things don't make me cry. Only false or sentimental things can do that. In this respect I'm like most civilised humans.”

“You love life because life's all there is.”

“Humans are moving into a new phase, one based on the knowledge that talking about their feelings has never got them anywhere.”

“Theres a reason humans peg-out around eighty: prose fatigue. It looks like organ failure or cancer or stroke but its really just the inability to carry on clambering through the assault course of m...”

“By all means, become an abomination--but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.”

“In youth, it was a way I had,To do my best to please.And change, with every passing ladTo suit his theories.But now I know the things I knowAnd do the things I do,And if you do not like me so,To he...”

“All of nature was a record of crisis and destruction and adaptation and flourishing and being knocked back down again. What had happened on New Terra was singular and concrete, but the pattern it w...”

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes th...”

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

“Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”