“The fear I felt was no rational fear, but a panic terror not only of the Martians but of the dusk and stillness all about me. Such an extraordinary effect in unmanning me it had that I ran weeping silently as a child might do. Once I had turned, I did not dare look back.”
“She’d shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe even more vividly human than anyone he’d ever known.”
Naughty children with nasty habits, cartoon heroes that come to life, lonely caretakers, unhappy ghosts, fantastical creatures with crazy names, giants, goblins, vampires, mermaids.
“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant...I have accepted the universality of incompetence.”