We share need, not-human. Yours is straightforward.” … “Mine is less so, but you will serve it. Come.

Only in summer-phase is it carnivorous.”

If there was an award for understatement, I thought, the Tyr would trounce all competition.

The Tyr had tried. It had really tried. It must have gone over every element of human psychology, tried desperately to understand the nature of human aesthetic sense … and then failed, miserably, in every regard.

Hours later there came a change. It began to grow light in the bus. The greyness outside the
windows turned from mud-colour to mother of pearl, then to faintest blue, then to a bright blueness that stung the eyes. We seemed to be floating in a pure vacancy. There were no lands, no sun, no stars in sight: only the radiant abyss.

Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist?

The best thing we can do with rejection is to make it a learning experience - rejection is a great teacher.