Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

He held her hand and shook his head. "They're inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.

I will learn by screwing up.

Oh, there will still be deception. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real.

Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.

It is the bullet you don’t hear that gets you.

Mother Nature is a bitch.

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable.""You enjoy being nurtured?""Well, that isn’t all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries.

In the society of would-be-gods, a humble man is always polite.

He had performed this ritual before, getting into trouble and then coming to his mother, uneasy and uncertain, not sure precisely what sort of trouble he was in. With uncanny regularity, she had seemed to jump onto a higher plane of reasoning and identify his problems, laying them out for him so they became unavoidable. This was not a service that made him love her any more, but it did make her invaluable to him.