Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance. Old age is similarly a waiting room, where you go after life's over and wait for cancer or a stroke. The years before and after the menstrual years are vestigial: the only meaningful condition left to women is that of fruitfulness.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.

The story is not in the plot but in the telling.

Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it.

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.