To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.

...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

As convenient as it is for information to come to us, libraries do have a valuable side effect: they force all of the smart people to come together in one place where they can interact with one another.

Part of being a sentient human is the ability to anticipate others' mental states - to say "Fred's going to hate this but Jane would love it."

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

I really am just trying to tell stories. But stories are often grounded in larger events and themes. They don't have to be - there's a big literature of trailer-park, kitchen-table fiction that's just about goings-on in the lives of ordinary people - but my own tastes run toward stories that in addition to being good stories are set against a backdrop that is interesting to read and learn about.