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

Laughter is a powerful weapon for it carries the light. To laugh is to defy the darkness.

Only humans think death is evil. But it is nature. Evil exist's only in life. There is much good and evil alloted to each life.

Long fiction is wonderful and you can lose yourself in it as a reader and as a writer, but short stories don't allow the same kind of immersion. Often the best stories hold you back and make you witness them. This may be one of the reasons some people reject the form. That and the fact that they are harder work to read. A story will not let you get comfortable and settle in. It is like a stool that is so small that you must always be aware of sitting.

Oh yes. It's open all right, but not many people come in here to look at me now so there's no point in selling tickets. No one is interested in a man who professes to be a monster. They'll give me notice very soon. I started out being a great attraction, but people soon understood that what fascinated them about me was no more than the reflection of their own deformities. All I do is how them what is inside themselves,' He added mournfully.

Maruman does not loll.

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.