And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.

Within your culture as a whole, there is in fact no significant thrust toward global population control. The point to see is that there never will be such a thrust so long as you're enacting a story that says the gods made the world for man. For as long as you enact that story, Mother Culture will demand increased food production today- and promise population control tomorrow.

When you send off a short story, it sits on the editor's desk in the same pile with stories by the most famous and honored names in present-day writing-and it's not going to be accepted unless it's as good as theirs. (And it'll probably have to be better.)

Pity is always twinged with disgust.

The world must live. We are only one species among billions. The gods don't love us any more than they love spiders or bears or whales or water lilies.

You never actually know how you're going to handle a problem until you actually have it.

Our schools are much like our prisons: they disappoint us because they only do what they're designed to do, and it annoys us that they don't do something else!