Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.

Men are loyal when you lead from the front.

Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?

We write dust epitaphs for our vanquished enemies and watch them blow away in the desert wind.

A desert's a stupid place to put a river.

Short fiction seems more targeted - hand grenades of ideas, if you will. When they work, they hit, they explode, and you never forget them. Long fiction feels more like atmosphere: it's a lot smokier and less defined.

Mahlia... understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn't trying to change them. He wasn't trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she'd been surviving. She thought that she'd been fighting for herself. But all she'd done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon ... not for their lives, but for their souls