Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude.

It isn't that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It's that the truth is too hideous to face.

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.

His heart, the war. Her face, the battlefield.

Could there be irony crueler than this? How, upon his rescue, the truth had brought him here, to a house for the mad, for only a madman believes what every child knows to be true: There are monsters that lie in wait under our beds.

Great sci-fi has never shied from tackling the Big Questions, though really great sci-fi never forgets to entertain us along the way. Shock and awe applies to art, as well.

Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was.