“Yup,” Heather replied. “Some jackass tries to prick me and I’m gonna prick him right back! Leave the bottle, bucko. Save ya a trip.”

“That’s what happens when you crowd enough folks into the same sandbox: eventually they’re gonna start throwing a fit over who gets what part to play with.”

“Be not fickle with your riddles, Alasír,” she said. “You and I both suspect the same thing. Someone has been out here poking the bear, if you’ll excuse me crude analogy.”

“I feel it respectful to observe and practice new customs, if I am to ever understand what it truly means to be human.”

“They'd need to do some shopping. As he adjusted the shoulders of the last dress, their eyes met in the mirror. He raised his right hand solemnly. "I swear I never played with Barbie dolls." A grin flickered at the corner of her mouth, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again. He raised an eyebrow. "You might as well say it; go on." Her expression in the mirror was both sly and apprehensive. "Just thinking perhaps you were making up for lost time." He ran his hand up beneath the back of the dress and pinched her, making her yelp. "Yup, no question about it. Lego was never like this." He stroked her ass and the straps that demarcated ass from thigh. "Not like this.”

“A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rules. But for a statement to the world at large, once I've thought a book through and written it in my mind, it takes me around a week or so, depending on this and that, ordinarily at the rate of a chapter a day, but I've had some two-chapters day and some chapters have taken two days. And then of course there is revision, but around a week is about right." He seemed surprised, and I was surprised by his surprise, so I thought, maybe I'm wrong. I went home and wrote this book, at the perfectly normal pace of a chapter a day, as usual...”

“Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.”