How does the fool build his paradise?—out of the crumbling bricks of illusion and the watery cement of hope. - Robert Sheckley

I found her charming, went home and thought no more about her. Or, I thought I would think no more about her. But in the following days and nights her image remained obsessively before my eyes. My appetite fell off and I began sleeping badly. My computer checked out the relevant data and told me that I might conceivably be having a nervous breakdown; but the strongest inference was that I was in love.

That's so like you Terrans," Melith remarked sadly. "You want responsibility only if it doesn't incur risk. That's a wrong attitude for running a government.

The coincidence would be too great anywhere except in Venice, where the machinery of illusion delights in casting up the improbable, the unusual, and the unexpected. There is a price, of course; by tampering with probabilities, Venice induces a deterioration in the commonplace—to her disadvantage.