The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

She'll die.' 'Aye. That's a consequence of being alive.

Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him.

One of the things [fiction] does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.

To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.

...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

Science fiction - and the correct shortcut is 'sf' - uses actual scientific facts or theories for the source ideas or framework of the story. It has some scientific content, however speculative. If it breaks a law of physics, it knows it's doing so and follows up the consequences. If it invents a society of aliens, it does so with some respect for and knowledge of the social sciences and what you might call social probabilities. And some of it is literarily self-aware enough to treat its metaphors as metaphors.