If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.

Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality.

If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.

I have never resisted the lord in my life, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.