Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad. - Frederik Pohl

All of them had been so tested and retested that they had acquired considerable skill in answering test questions the way the examiners wanted them answered.

There’s an editor for you.
They’re all the same. At first they’re all honey and sweet talk, with those long alcoholic lunches and blue-sky conversation about million-copy printings while they wheedle you into signing the contract. Then they turn nasty. They want the actual book delivered. When they don’t get it, or when the censors say they can’t print it, then there isn’t any more sweet talk and all the conversation is about how the aediles will escort you to debtors’ prison.

There is no greater dark than the dark between the stars.