Philip Jose Farmer quotes:

There are Universes begging for Gods, yet he hangs around this one looking for work.

Prometheus, I have no Titan's might, Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart, For daytime's vulture talons tear apart The tender alcoves built by love at night.

The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.

By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web. What man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.

This story is about love, which means that it is also about hate.

Beauty in this Iron Age must turn From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn Who hopes to wake the Future to arise In Phoenix -fashion, and to shine with rays To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes Of selfishness and lust have stained our days...

It was a shameful thing that she had nothing of which to be ashamed.