As the old saying went, the Manhattan Project wasn't built in a day. Or was that Rome? Something to do with Earth, anyway.

Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever.

The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off - it just gives up, resets itself to zero.

To see something marvelous with your own eyes-that's wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you'll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won't ever really exist as a whole until you're together, talking or thinking about that moment ...that's worth more than one plus one. It's worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can't even imagine it.

A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.

I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.