Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.

The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Is the prisoner a prisoner because he lives in a cage or because he knows that he lives in a cage?

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

It's getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I've drowned and be celebrating.

Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.