It Was The Day My Grandmother Exploded.

"one Of The Advantages Of Having Laws Is The Pleasure One May Take In Breaking Them. We Here Are Not Children, Mr. Gurgeh." Hamin Waved The Pipestem Round The Tables Of People. "rules And Laws Exist Only Because We Take Pleasure In Doing What They Forbid, But As Long As Most Of The People Obey Such Proscriptions Most Of The Time, They Have Done Their Job; Blind Obedience Would Imply We Are - Ha!" - Hamin Chuckled And Pointed At The Drone With The Pipe - "no More Than Robots!"

It Was A Truism That All Civilizations Were Basically Neurotic Until They Made Contact With Everybody Else And Found Their Place Within The Ever-changing Meta-civilisation Of Other Beings, Because, Until Then, During The Stage When They Honestly Believed They Might Be Entirely Alone In Existence, All Solo Societies Were Possessed Of Both An Inflated Sense Of Their Own Importance And A Kind Of Existential Terror At The Sheer Scale And Apparent Emptiness Of The Universe.

You're A Wicked Man." "thank You. It's Taken Years Of Diligent Practice.

There Has Seldom If Ever A Shortage Of Eager Young Males Prepared To Kill And Die To Preserve The Security, Comfort And Prejudices Of Their Elders, And What You Call Heroism Is Just An Expression Of This Simple Fact; There Is Never A Scarcity Of Idiots.

Most Mainstream Male Fiction Is Littered With Heroines, And Female Characters Are Basically So Great, You Want To Fall In Love With Them.