Well, strangeness was hard to think about. Wonder grazes you like a bullet; it zips by and is gone, and all you really perceive is the zing as it goe… - Sheri S. Tepper

He has brain waves!" she shouted.
"He has the same kind of brain waves as chickens. As a matter of fact, his brain waves are virtually indistinguishable from those of chickens."
"He's not a chicken. He's a human being!"
Leelson's face was very pale, his mouth was hard. "Morphologically, he's a human being. Mentally, he's a chicken.

Coup markers? Jep had asked Pirva. "The cause?"
Pirva had not looked up from what she was doing. "The Cause is their society, their religion, their brotherhood," she had said, the words dripping like acid from her mouth. "It's a killers' club. A man gets a coup counter for each Abolitionist or Gharm man, woman, or child he has killed out there in Ahabar or the Three Counties. There are special counters for bombs set off in the three counties, no matter who is killed or mutilated."

Picture this: A mountain splintering the sky like a broken bone, its western precipice plummeting onto jumbled scree.