A prison does not only lock its inmates inside, it keeps all others out. Her strongest prison is of her own construction.

My family was scientifically inclined: My brother did turn into a neurophysiologist, and I almost became a scientist myself. I could have gone that way.

If all fossil fuel were to go POOF! tomorrow, the result would be a cataclysmic social upheaval, with food riots, warlords, shutdowns, breakdown of social order, water shortages, and outbreaks of bloodshed and disease.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.

What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.

Your friend is intellectually honourable," Jimmy's mother would say. "He doesn't lie to himself.