“Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.”

“What are you?' Trout asked the boy scornfully. 'Some kind of gutless wonder?' This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robotwho had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what madethe story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespreaduse of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had noconscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening tothe people on the ground. Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on,and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline onpeople. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. But then he cleared that up, and he waswelcomed to the human race.”

“He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man across from him...came to hate him for that look. The young man lit a cigarette from his, tried talking to him, and even jostled him, to let him feel that he was not a thing but a human being, but Vronsky went on looking at him as at a lampost, and the young man grimaced, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the pressure of this non-recognition of himself as a human being...”

“He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for talking with them, no, no! Then he felt as though he were dealing with another species of human being, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired the weak, pale, little girl and had picked her to be his wife. That was still the only way he could think of a woman - as a wife. He danced in a very chaste and proper manner, but he heard awful stories about his pals, stories he didn't understand until later. They could dance the waltz backwards around the room in a very indecent way, and they told naughty stories about the girls.”

“You could never tell if he was with you or not, so Cooley liked to talk to him just in case. Just to remind them both that this was still a human being. He never wanted to catch himself treating Jack like a thing, a chore to be done.”

“Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.”