If it worked it would be like trying to wipe your eye with a blowtorch — James Tiptree, Jr

"Did you know you get clobbered for calling a polyglot a linguist?"

"Our fellow passenger was Major Grogan, who thirty years before had been the first white man to go from the Cape to Cairo. It took him three years, one whole year in the marshes of the Sudd; his two companions died. It is said he ate them; I think so. He looked like a sensible man."

"Somewhere in his head a couple of neurones twitched, but they didn’t connect."

"Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him, it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re about to die trying."

"People, of course, seemed to need also to talk and talk, which was a pity because their talk was mostly without meaning."

"Anyone who shoots a real gun at you when drunk and angry is simply not husband material, regardless of his taste in literature."