How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.

Our time here is brief, our risk enormous. Don't waste the one or increase the other, if you please.

You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

Death was no less a miracle than birth.

Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.

Such an ego simply forbade certain lines of thought.