“Ask Baby can you be truly part of someone you love.""He says only if you love yourself.”

“Why on earth do you carry a mirror around with you?” “It's purely a defensive device. We seldom quarrel, and this is one of the reasons. Can you imagine yourself getting all worked up and contorted and illogical and then coming face to face with yourself, looking at yourself exactly as you look to everyone else?”

“Just think about it," he said softly. "You can do practically anything. You can have practically everything. And none of it will keep you from being alone.""Shut up shut up...Everybody's alone."He nodded. "But some people learn how to live with it.”

“Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose? ”

“A billion and a half human souls, who had been given the techniques of music and the graphic arts, and the theory of technology, now had the others: philosophy and logic and love; sympathy, empathy, forbearance, unity, in the idea of their species rather than in their obedience; membership in harmony with all life everywhere.A people with such feelings and their derived skills cannot be slaves. As the light burst upon them, there was only one concentration possible to each of them—to be free, and the accomplished feeling of being free. As each found it, he was an expert in freedom, and expert succeeded expert, transcended expert, until (in a moment) a billion and a half human souls had no greater skill than the talent of freedom.”

“Ask the next question.”

“Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.”