Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.

In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing.

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?

The light was only just visible - except of course that there was no one to see, no witnesses, not this time, but it was nevertheless a light.

There was a terribly ghastly silence. There was a terribly ghastly noise. There was a terribly ghastly silence.

For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.

Ha, but my life is a box of wormgears.