Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?

I actually don't think that there is a connection between the survival instinct and a hunger for immortality.

For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane.

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

They went inside. The young ones shuffled to a stop as their ironic sensibilities, which served them in lieu of souls, were jammed by a signal of overwhelming power.

...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.