Did all outcasts come to this realization at a certain point in life? That being outcast from a bogus and pornographic society actually was a good thing? I hoped so. I hoped there was an army of us out there, smiling about it that very moment.

It's hard to imagine, seeing how crowded the sky looks tonight, how far away one star is from another. Like people, really. We can appear to be standing right next to each other, and yet in our minds, we can be thousand miles away, lost to the outer reaches. But we're altogether in the same black soup, which makes us all related somehow.

It had been bound to happen. If anything, technology created a space for the strange and the afraid. Some would argue that the environment had created those people, but I doubted that. Those who flocked to technology as a place to hide and to fit in would have found something else, but instead they found another life.

We will no longer be outcasts - we will be rulers.

Then the wooden benches along the walls, where so many outcasts had slept, would be lit by a sort of slow, clocked lightning til the bulb steadied and fastened its tiny feral fury upon the center of the room like a single sullen and manic eye. To burn on there with a steady hate. Til morning wearied and dimmed it away to nothing more than some sort of little old lost gray child of a district-station moon, all its hatred spent.

There was a certain freedom in being on the outside. He watched instead of being watched.

Black doves and white crows flew to her, for she was mother to the outcasts.

Stand up for the poor, the defenseless, the stranger, the outcast. If you must have prejudices, at least have the right ones.

The earth is not just for the clever and the strong. It must be possible even for weak and pitiful creatures — like himself and this old dog — to make some contribution in their lifetime.

The black sheep are the ones you want to get to know.