Cash is always the deciding factor in such matters of moral politics; nothing ever gets done unless motivated by commerce or greed.

What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?” “I don’t know—avant verrais?

I've never been averse to a little risk - after all, writing without risk is not really writing at all. Sometimes one has to just let fly with a high concept piece and see where the pieces fall. As it generally turns out, the central story is familiar, but just with different rules of engagement.

Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment--the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.

You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.

Quarkbeasts, for all their fearsome looks, are obedient to a fault. They are nine-tenths velociraptor and kitchen blender and one-tenth Labrador. It was the Labrador tenth that I valued most.

I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.