I know only too well from a personal experience that is number one on my list of things to be forgotten.

It’s this mucking inefficiency and death of the cosmos—and don’t tell me that isn’t in the cards!—masquerading as benign omniscient authority.

Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards.

In the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it’s true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless accidents.

Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.

Poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time.

Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.

Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past’s mistakes and the future’s fears.

For that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone? First published in Fantastic Stories of Imagination (1963), this novelette has been reprinted in several anthologies, including The Spell of Seven|The Spell of Seven (ed. L. Sprague de Camp, Pyramid Books, 1965), Bazaar of the Bizarre (collection)|Bazaar of the Bizarre (Donald M. Grant, Publisher, 1978), and Ill Met in Lankhmar (White Wolf Publishing, 1995, ISBN 1-56504-926-8).

The Devourers are the most accomplished merchants in all the many universes - so accomplished, indeed, that they sell only trash. There is a deep necessity in this, for the Devourers must occupy all their cunning in perfecting their methods of selling and so have not an instant to spare in considering the worth of what they sell.