"My impression was of an uncomfortably industrious place where there always seemed to be more jobs than people, unless one was careful, so on this particular evening I contrived to lie low until routine sounds told me that it was near enough to the mealtime for me to show myself safely."

"There's a type of woman who isn't content until she's made herself some man's slave and doormat—put herself completely in his power."

"'In point of fact our ascendancy has been so complete that we are rarely called upon to kill wolves nowadays - in fact, most of us have quite forgotten what it means to have to fight in a personal way against another species. But, when the need arises we have no compunction in fully supporting those who slay the threat whether it is from wolves, insects, bacteria, or filterable viruses; we give no quarter, and certainly expect no pardon.'"

"There was often a great deal of grown-up fuss that seemed disproportionate to causes. The ways of the world were very puzzling. . . ."

"But we had learnt, as had many before us, about the bread-alone factor, one needed more than adequate food."

"Practically everyone there had had an air of brooding privately with differing intensity. I knew now what it had reminded me of - the outpatients department of a hospital."

"WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT !"

"'Cruelty is as old as life itself.'"

"Unfortunately there were certain persons with elastic principles."

"'A species continues to exist by outbreeding the checks that its natural enemies impose on it. That is what gives the illusion of "the balance of nature" belief. Once the natural enemies cease to be a threat its fecundity becomes terrifying. Look what has happened in a generation or two to our own population, largely because a few diseases have been overcome. Find a way of conquering the natural enemies, and the only limiting factor is the food supply.'"

"We shan't get homo superior without any birth-pangs."

"I see death as the worm's opportunity. It is defeat. You can dress it as you like, with drama, or glory, or pomposity, and perhaps deceive yourself for the critical moment - but, nevertheless, the same worm comes - it is defeat..."

"There is a sense of reason's fingernails scrabbling to keep their hold, as one slides towards something which is not accountable; not, by ordinary standards, quite sane..."

"'In spite of what they say, two can't live as cheap as one. And wives hanker after certain standards, and ought to have them - within reason, of course.'"

"Truth is not altered by belief or disbelief."

"Wondering why one's friends chose to marry the people they did is unprofitable, but recurrent."

"'We've got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about it.'"

"Life in all its forms is strife; the better matched the opponents, the harder the struggle. The most powerful of all weapons is intelligence; any intelligent form dominates by, and therefore survives by, its intelligence."

"'You know perfectly well that women can and do - or rather did - handle the most complicated and delicate machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally happens is that they're too lazy to take the trouble unless they have to.'"

"'There's a whole lot of people don't seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he'll take you seriously.'"

"'You can't drive a flock of sheep to market in a dead straight line, but there are ways of getting 'em there.'"

"Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's?"

"Safe passage along the catwalk of one's own racial code must be achieved through long experience; it is harder still to climb from it to another, and when that other is as involved as a maze and is entirely supported by incomprehensible misconceptions, a foot is bound to slip through the fabric from time to time."

"How many men, do you suppose, realise the limitations of using words to convey our meanings? They may find that there are inconvenient misunderstandings, and blame language, but how many admit that the words are just a substitute for the thing they really lack—mental communication? Precious few. My point is that they do not realise the lack of direct mental communication, because they've never had it. They look on spoken or written language as a natural method of expression, whereas it is really a mechanical process [...]"

"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."

"It's better to have a pistol you don't want, than to want a pistol you've not got."

"There's nothing more egocentric than a cat."

"Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there."

"She rummaged in a battered bag beside her, brought out a dirty spoon, and began to taste the beans as if they were one of the jams of paradise."

""We ourselves have a tradition of taking beatings, and then winning wars," said Bocker."

"She had an exasperating feeling that there was a principle somewhere that she had missed; a principle which once grasped would make the whole thing as clear as daylight. But if there was it continued to elude her."

"One hears of the Industrial Revolution as though it were a mere phase, finished and done with. It is not, and it shows no sign of ever being completed."

"We have had a glorious past—but a glorious past is bitterness for a child with a hopeless future."

"Poor baby, what a world to come into."

"There are, of course, risks. In fact, there are three distinct kinds of risk: the known ones which we can and shall prepare against; the known ones which we must trust to luck to avoid; and the entirely unknown."

"Knowledge?" said the doctor. "Yes, I suppose that is it. For ever and for ever seeking knowledge. And we don't even know why we seek it. It's an instinct, like self-preservation; and about as comprehensible. Why, I wonder, do I keep on living. I know I've got to die sooner or later, yet I take the best care I can that it shall be later instead of finishing the thing off in a reasonable manner. After all, I've done my bit—propagated my species, and yet for some inscrutable reason I want to go on living and learning. Just an instinct. Some kink in the evolutionary process caused this passion for knowledge, and the result is man—an odd little creature, scuttling around and piling up mountains of this curious commodity. What do you suppose will happen when one day a man sits back in his chair and says: 'Knowledge is complete'? You see, it just sounds silly. We're so used to collecting it, that we can't imagine a world where it is all collected and finished."

""I'm afraid I'm not very good at understanding things like that." "You say that, but what you really mean is: 'I don't want to understand things like that.' " "It's true," she admitted."

"Fate is not above using inconsiderable details for her obscure purpose."

"The world has so multiplied the causes of fear that no one is left entirely unafraid."

"In the country you can at least grow things. You do have a chance. But a city is a sort of desert of bricks and stones. Once you've used up what is there, you're done for."

"What is life anyway? - some kind of seed floating about the universe until it finds suitable conditions to develop? May be. Lord knows what there may be in all this Space. Perhaps we were once a few chance spores; perhaps there are a lot of different kinds of life floating about waiting for time to give them their chance . . ."

"I'd begun to grasp the principle that the less anybody knows, the less any squealer can give away. And it was easy to see that in a place where questioning was liable to assume the aspect of a blood-sport, the less one did know about other people's business, the better."

"'Somehow running away seldom seems to work out well unless you have a pretty good idea what you're running to.""

"I suppose we all have a number of carefully furnished, non-communicating rooms in our minds."

"The Devil is busy here...The gangs, the drugs, all the evil that men do to each other here. Sometimes even..."

"(Part I paragraph 1)"

"(Part I paragraph 4)"

"They provide relief. Sometimes, it’s the relief of the same genre as what we find in a church sanctuary when the minister ascends to the pulpit and late-morning sunlight is blasting through the windows behind him to gild him and the congregants before you as the choir reaches the climax of the doxology. Sometimes, it’s the relief of a kind yet somehow firm-and-gentle hand at the back of the neck, kneading away not sorrow but the loneliness that can attend it. Sometimes, it’s the relief of discovering you’re no longer bound by the laws of gravity and that, yes, you can actually fly. Sometimes, it’s an answer. Stories do all of these things for us. I’m convinced we’d be utterly lost without them."

"As some are drawn to bars and others to churches, I’m drawn to bookstores and libraries. They’re sanctuaries. They’re sanctuary. Hope germinates in me that osmosis will take place and whatever goodness is in those books that got them a place on those shelves will leak into me and I’ll produce something that could someday go there."

"I hate it here. Everything's so—' She searches for a word that will tell Mama how violent it always is or how much she hates having to hide in the closet every time it even looks like gangbangers might roll through...--"