There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

Nobody gets beyond a petroleum economy. Not while there's petroleum there.

I think all the simple things can and do still work - holding your child's hand while walking across the street will do it. But we can hardly hear it for all the noise which has turned love into a cliche, and most people can't even hear John Lennon's "All You Need Is Love" anymore without wincing.

If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include the truth of contact or be forever hollow.

Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

The past is dead and buried. But I know now that buried things have a way of rising to the surface when one least expects them to.

No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.