One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!

Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.