He would never let us go. We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time. We would be forever with him, with the cavern-fil… - Harlan Ellison

I’m afraid I felt a straight pin of jealousy. Perfection does that to me.

Michelangelo gave them each a shove. Off the short dock. They sank without a ripple, borne to the infinite bottom by the weight of their severity, the heft of their sententiousness, the freighting of pecksniffian nit-picking that stuffed their otherwise wooly heads. They went straight to the bottom, wherever that was, down and down, leaving behind only a funnel of bubbles, the last of the hot air they contained.

When they dug the body out of the alley, it made even the hardened construction workers and emergency squad cops ill. Not one bone was left unbroken. The very flesh seemed to have been masticated as if by a nation of cannibal dogs. Even so, the three inured excavators who finally used winding sheets and shovels to bring the shapeless mess up from its five-foot grave agreed that it was incredible, totally past belief, that the head and face were untouched. And they all agreed that the expression on the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, only if he is worthy of those dreams.