It was a shameful thing that she had nothing of which to be ashamed.

It was a shameful thing that she had nothing of which to be ashamed.

As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.

By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web. What man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.

Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It's impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural.

The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.