So it is with all the great leaders: the commodity they have to sell is personality. Mere ideas can be left to lesser men. - Robert Silverberg

I hate no one, sir. It seems a waste of emotional energy.

Nothing was his business, these days. When a man had no business, he had to appoint himself to some. So he was here to do research, ostensibly, which is to say to snoop and spy.

There’s no use trying to kid myself with cheery little uplifting cliches. I’ve been forced right up against the underlying truth of things. What a dark and cruel place the world is, for all its beauty, for all its wonder! We have miracles around us on every side—a spiderweb is a miracle, Lora!—but we also have violence, insanity, terrible disease, sudden death. The same Nature that brings us the mountains and the rivers and the green glistening meadows brings us the hurricane, the earthquake, the flood of red-hot lava rolling toward the city.