A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason. Think of it as the altar of the Muse Oblivion, to whom you sacrifice your botched first drafts, the tokens of your human imperfection.

we lived in the gaps between the stories

What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

She had her reasons. Not that they were the same as anybody else's reasons.