Charlie Jane Anders

That__ the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can__ stand it when someone else lets their crazy show.

What was worse, being crazy or being evil?

That__ the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else.

Love was the most susceptible to random failure of all human enterprises.

Loneliness was a full-body sensation, an anti-exhilaration, from his core outward.

Maybe she would have done more good as a playwright than as a doctor, after all _ clichés were like plaque in the arteries of the imagination, they clogged the sense of what was possible. Maybe if enough people had worked to demolish clichés, the world wouldn't have ended.

You turned your guilt into resentment, because that seems easier to face. You won't move on until you turn it back into guilt, and then into forgiveness for yourself.

Why would anybody be a Satanist, anyway? I don__ get it. You can__ believe in Satan without believing in God, and then you__e just picking the wrong side in a big mythic battle thing.

A society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn't know it yet.

Do you think the occasional witch burning helps to weld society together?

As Dorothy J. Heydt famously said, the eight deadliest words for any work of fiction are 'I don't care what happens to these people.

When the world turns chaotic, we must be the better part of chaos.

I hope it's the good kind of dilemma," Reginald broke Patricia's reverie. "Whatever one you're on the horns of."..."I was just thinking," she said. "There are so many scary problems in the world. Like, I was just reading that we could be seeing the last of the bees in North America soon. And if that happened, food webs would just collapse, and tons more people would starve. But suppose you had the power to change things? You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you'd create another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature's way of striking a balance. We humans don't have any natural predators left, so nature has to find another way to handle us."..."I am, as you know, a fan of nature," said Reginald. "And yet, nature doesn't 'find ways' to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It's more that nature's playing field is full of traps.

He went to make coffee. Because when you have just heard about the possible transformation of the human race into feral monsters you need to be doing something with your hands and creating something hot and comforting for another person.

Booze really was medicinal, after a near-death experience. Holding a drink in both hands and letting it corrode the topmost layer of his mouth and throat, Laurence felt a spiritual relationship with Bushmills.

Believe me, there__ nothing worse than being both immortal and intelligent. Imagine the boredom! Plus you start to ask questions, and the worst thing about questions is that sometimes, they have answers.

Laurence felt a weird combination of shame and rage, as though he'd grown another new body part just in time to get punched in it.

And she felt like they, the two of them, right here, right now, could make something that defied tragedy.