I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime.

I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.

I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.