My favourite mentor brother told me that there were three kinds of people: followers, leaders and scouts. Scouts are capeable of leadership, but they could not tolerate the responsibility of it. Disinclined to take orders either, they invariably flouted authority and fomented strife. This is why scouts, he said wryly, were the first to be sent into danger, It was half hoped they would be killed. 'I fear you are destined to trouble us as a scout, little sister' he said

Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have. I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick.

Impatience is not the least of your faults, Malik, it is a kind of greed and someday it may see you undone.

Short stories do not say this happened and this happened and this happened. They are a microcosm and a magnification rather than a linear progression.

If she is afraid of mirrors she is afraid of herself.

She's forgetting,' Ellen said to Jack, plumping herself down on a chair. 'All of her life is leaking out of her. Soon there will be nothing left.

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully