If only she could convince them, perhaps she could convince herself. - John Varley

Buildings were just the world's furniture, and he didn't care how it was arranged.

They were testing ways whereby people didn't have to live in Chicago. It was a wonder to me. I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.

What they had going certainly came as near as anyone ever has in this imperfect world to a sane, rational way for people to exist without warfare and with a minimum of politics. In the end, those two old dinosaurs are the only ways humans have yet discovered to be social animals. Yes, I do see war as a way of living with one another; by imposing your will on another in terms so unmistakable that the opponent has to either knuckle under to you, die, or beat your brains out. And if that’s a solution to anything, I'd rather live without solutions. Politics is not much better. The only thing going for it is that it occasionally succeeds in substituting talk for fists.