You were safe on a troll. Anyone wanting to mug a troll would have to use a building on a stick.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

Well, the traveling teachers do come through every few months," said the Baron. "Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they're useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It's like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they're good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it's too late.

It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory.

Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.

He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.

The kind of accidents you prefer to call...accidents.