“Love story? When it's as cold as this? Fine, all right.”

“When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full posession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims-- these are lucky eventualities but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.”

“every story - love or war - is a story about looking left when we should have been looking right.”

“We walk a fine line between commendable passion for that which we love--starships, superpowers, costumes, fantastic stories--and an almost frightening militancy about the Right Way to Enjoy Them.”

“Was their love worth the erasure of the world and all its stories?”

“I remember a story I once heard about drowning: that when you fall into cold water it's not that you drown right away but that the cold disorients you and makes you think that down is up and up is down, so you may be swimming, swimming, swimming for your life in the wrong direction, all the way toward the bottom until you sink. That's how I feel, as though everything has been turned around.”