“Your collection is not a woman. That’s only a metaphor—an abstraction! You’ll be dying for nothing, for a principle that nobody else can even compre… - Michael Swanwick

The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered.

You will study bioscience control, that ought to be useful—it will teach you the folly of thinking you can go against your genetic inheritance, for one thing.

Well, birth control's easy. The first thing you have to know is that it doesn't work."
"What?"
"Not consistently. No matter how careful you are, every time you play hide-the-salami with the boys, you're running the risk of ending up with a belly full of consequences."
"But—"
"Contraceptive spells are never entirely reliable. That's because their power comes from the Mother, and the Mother wants children. Each cantrip has its loophole, every fetish its flaw. Ultimately, contraception is just a way of luring you into playing her game."
"You mean that sooner or later it's going to fail me?"
"That's not what I said. It works well enough for enough of us that the rest will take their chances. But the odds are never going to be as good as you'd like them to be. There are no guarantees.