"It was clear to Barnaby that Blackie was really a villain. Not everybody knew this. A melodrama villain is only black behind the lights. Off stage he should have a heart of gold. Whether of wrestling match, or afternoon serial, or evening drama or film, or on the little stage here at the Golden Gate Bar, the villain should be — when his role is finished — kind and courteous, thoughtful and big-hearted, a prince of a fellow." —R. A. Lafferty
"He was about the last of them. What? The last of the great individualists? The last of the true creative geniuses of the century? The last of the sheer precursors? No. No. He was the last of the dolts. Kids were being born smarter all the time when he came along, and they would be so forever more. He was about the last dumb kid ever born." —R. A. Lafferty
· 1975 Seiun Winner, Best Foreign Short Story · 2001 Orson Scott Card, The Best Science Fiction of the Century · 1973 Hugo Winner, Best Short Story · 1973 Locus 16th, Best Short Fiction
"Christopher Foxx was walking down a city street. No, it was a city road. It was really a city trail or path. He was walking in a fog, but the fog wasn't in the air or the ambient: it was in his head. Things were mighty odd here. There was just a little bit of something wrong about things. Oceans of grass for one instance. Should a large and busy city (and this was clearly that) have blue-green grass belly-high in its main street? " —R. A. Lafferty
"Tobias Lamb, though not well liked, was held in high esteem by the scientific community. There were many of us who hardly liked him because — well, it was because his tricks and illusions sometimes shattered us completely. “And besides,” Alwin Garvie said of him, “he's an unlikely man.” Ah well, admit it, we were afraid of him. He was a harsh mocker; and yet he had a pleasant strain (or it was meant to be pleasant) in him. He was a hard driver. If he didn't actually hold a whip in his hand when he was working on a project, there was always a whip in his voice. He was avid, even feverish, to drive a project to success; and yet he didn't seem at all hungry for personal glory. " —R. A. Lafferty
"The five underground levels had been parking places for motor vehicles when those were still common, but now these depths were turned into warrens and hovels. The Sky-Seller lurked and lived in the lowest and smallest and meanest of them all. He came out only at night. Daylight would have killed him: he knew that. He sold out of the darkest shadows of the night. He had only a few (though oddly select) clients, and nobody knew who his supplier was. He said that he had no supplier, that he gathered and made the stuff himself. Welkin Alauda, a full-bodied but light-moving girl (it was said that her bones were hollow and filled with air), came to the Sky-Seller just before first light, just when he had become highly nervous but had not yet bolted to his underground." —R. A. Lafferty