Have a short story feature two situations, and then let them solve each other.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time--though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them

Woody Allen once said: "You know there must be intelligent life in space. The question is do they have good Chinese restaurants and do they deliver?" Which is really a joke, but it is also a very profound remark. When you say do they have good Chinese restaurants, what you're really saying is, "How much are they like us?" And when you say, "Do they deliver?" you're saying, "Can they get here?" Both of which are profound questions. And at the present, we have no answers.

Men are said to desire women, Severian. Why do they despise the women they obtain?

...I rejoiced in the flaws that made her more real to me

...in some situations winning consist[s] of disentangling oneself.