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The mills of bureaucracy may or may not grind fine, but they certainly grind exceeding slow.

If I’ve learned one thing wandering around inside and outside the Solar System, it’s this: Nature has more ways of killing you than you can imagine. When you think you’ve learned them all, another one pops up to teach you humility—if you’re lucky. If not, someone else will have to decide what did you in.

Like many things in life, the problem I had been so sure I could solve proved more difficult than it sounded.

One thing you have to teach the young is that it’s wrong to run away from problems.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said huskily. “Nothing ever does before you understand it, and then it seems obvious.”

It’s the usual sensation mongering; the news services will say anything for an effect.

“I think I’ll have a sign made for that far wall,” said Bey at last.

“Indeed?”

“Yes. It will say, ‘If you have nothing to do, please don’t do it here’.”

He had achieved his objective, but his little inside voice would not keep quiet. Too easy, it said, much too easy. When a difficult goal is achieved with no effort, it’s time to be suspicious.

That’s the trouble with the younger generation. They don’t understand why a thing can’t be done, so they go ahead and do it.

“Hormones are everything, Turpin,” she said to the bird on her shoulder. “Brains are nice, and looks are nice, and logic’s even nicer; but hormones run the show. For everyone, even for me and you.”

The first ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang is far more interesting that the entire rest of the history of the universe.

The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them.