He had for many years thought of Christ as a rival in greatness. Now he realized they were both brothers in misery. Their enemies were identical: the… - Michael Swanwick

And she was off, leaping like a salmon from idea to idea. Hers was the kind of fast and playful intellect that enjoyed tossing a stone into the pond of received wisdom, just to see the frogs jump.

“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time.

She had gone rafting down the Eden. She had faced down the largest animals ever to walk the Earth. She had tended to a dying woman in her final days and nursed an ailing man back to health. She had known tears and laughter, toil, love, sweat, and danger.
These were the primal satisfactions, the things that made life matter. What did Washington, D.C., in the twenty-first century have to offer that could compare with them?