“Long ago Mars was an oasis of running water.Today the Martiansurfaceis a sterile,barren desert. Here on Earth, who knows what climactic knobs we unwittingly turn,which might one day render Earth as dry and lifeless as Mars. (From the cover of Old Poison by Joan Francis)”

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”

“...[C]ontrary to your Earth experience and its derived cynicism, on Mars, such things are possible. Yes, fully possible, even for you, a person who obviously was a complete social failure on Earth--otherwise you wouldn't be here.”

“Here ends the SILMARILLION. If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.”

“Mt. Everest of Earth is 8.8 km tall; Mt. Olympus of Mars is 22 km tall. Every time you see a giant, you must know that that giant might be just a dwarf somewhere else!”

“And in the livid night there creeps a basilisk, spawned by the moon after its strange fashion. The moon – eternally barren - is its father, but its mother is the sand, barren likewise: this is the mystery of the desert. Many say that it is an animal, but this is not so, it is a thought, growing there where there is no earth and no seed: a thought which sprang from that which is eternally barren, and now assumes strange forms which life does not know. This is the reason that no one can describe this being, because it is like nothingness, indescribable.”