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I Understand Now That Boundaries Between Noise And Sound Are Conventions. All Boundaries Are Conventions, Waiting To Be Transcended. One May Transcend Any Convention If Only One Can First Conceive Of Doing So.

-David Mitchell

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I Understand Now That

David Mitchell

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I Understand Now That Boundaries Between Noise And Sound Are Conventions. All Boundaries Are Conventions, Waiting To Be Transcended. One May Transcend Any Convention If Only One Can First Conceive Of Doing So.

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I Believe There Is Another World Waiting For Us. A Better World. And I'll Be Waiting For You There.

People B'lief The World Is Built So An Tellin Em It Ain't So Caves The Roofs On Their Heads'n'maybe Yours.

All Revolutions Are The Sheerest Fantasy Until They Happen; Then They Become Historical Inevitabilities.

How Lazily "xperts" Dismiss What They Fail To Understand!

If You Show Someone Something You've Written, You Give Them A Sharpened Stake, Lie Down In Your Coffin, And Say, ‘when You’re Ready’.

For White Men, To Live Is To Own, Or To Try To Own More, Or To Die Trying To Own More. Their Appetites Are Astonishing! They Own Wardrobes, Slaves, Carriages, Houses, Warehouses, And Ships. They Own Ports, Cities, Plantations, Valleys, Mountains, Chains Of Islands. They Own This World, Its Jungles, Its Skies, And Its Seas. Yet They Complain That Dejima Is A Prison. They Complain They Are Not Free.

If Only,’ Shiroyama Dreams, ‘human Beings Were Not Masks Behind Masks Behind Masks. If Only This World Was A Clean Board Of Lines And Intersections. If Only Time Was A Sequence Of Considered Moves And Not A Chaos Of Slippages And Blunders.

I Hear My Father-in-law's Response..."naïve, Dreaming Adam. He Who Would Do Battle With The Many-headed Hydra Of Human Nature Must Pay A World Of Pain & His Family Must Pay It Along With Him! & Only As You Gasp Your Dying Breath Shall You Understand, Your Life Amounted To No More Than One Drop In A Limitless Ocean!" Yet What Is Any Ocean But A Multitude Of Drops?

The Song Instantly Insisted It'd Never Existed.

Beyond The Indian Hamlet, Upon A Forlorn Strand, I Happened On A Trail Of Recent Footprints.

So Little Is Actually Worthy Of Belief Or Disbelief. Better To Strive To Coexist Than Seek To Disapprove . . .

Teachers're Always Using That "in Your Own Words." I Hate That. Authors Knit Their Sentences Tight. It's Their Job. Why Make Us Unpick Them, Just To Put It Back Together More Shonkily? How're You S'posed To Say Kapellmeister If You Can't Say Kapellmeister?

... In A Cycle As Old As Tribalism, Ignorance Of The Other Engenders Fear; Fear Engenders Hatred; Hatred Engenders Violence; Violence Engenders Further Violence Until The Only "rights", The Only Law, Are Whatever Is Willed By The Most Powerful.

When Insolvent, Pack Minimally, With A Valise Tough Enough To Be Thrown Onto A London Pavement From A First- Or Second-floor Window. Insist On Hotel Rooms No Higher.

There's A Link Between Bigotry And Bad Spelling.

Many Children Are Natural Fantasists, I Think, Perhaps Because Their Imaginations Have Yet To Be Clobbered Into Submission By Experience.

Why Ask A Question Whose Answer Would Demand Ten More Questions?

Have You Noticed," Said John, "how Countries Call Theirs 'sovereign Nuclear Deterrents,' But Call The Other Countries' Ones 'weapons Of Mass Destruction'?

Mass Destruction

I Lost My Balance When The Train Pulled Away, But A Human Crumple Zone Buffered My Fall. We Stayed Like That, Half Fallen. Diagonal People.

One's Ribs Shouldn't Be Prison Bars.

Sometimes, Comics Will Make The Observation That It's Not Jokes That Are Funny, It's Characters That Are Funny. And Isn't That True! That's Why I Always Kill Jokes. I'm Terrible At Them, Because I Get The Joke Right, But I Can't Get The Character Right, And It Just Goes Down Like A Lead Balloon.

I Believe Death Is Only A Door. One Closes, And Another Opens. If I Were To Imagine Heaven, I Would Imagine A Door Opening. And He Would Be Waiting For Me There.

If Your Words're True, They're Armed.

To Fool A Judge, Feign Fascination, But To Bamboozle The Whole Court, Feign Boredom.

Faith, The Least Exclusive Club On Earth, Has The Craftiest Doorman.

But No, We Cross, Crisscross, And Recross Our Old Tracks Like Figure Skaters.

Me, I Want To Bloody Kick This Moronic Bloody World In The Bloody Teeth Over And Over Till It Bloody Understands That Not Hurting People Is Ten Bloody Thousand Times More Bloody Important Than Being Right.

The Learnin' Mind Is The Livin' Mind, Meronym Said, An Any Sort O'smart Is Truesome Smart, Old Smart Or New High Smart Or Low.

Pain Is Strong, Aye - But Friends' Eyes, More Strong." I Told Him That He Knows Next To Nothing About Me & I Know Nothing About Him. He Jabbed At His Eyes & Jabbed At Mine, As If That Single Gesture Were Ample Explanation.

Eva. Every Day I've Climbed Up The Belfry Chanting A Lucky Chant At One Syllable Per Beat, "to-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.

Music’s A Wood You Walk Through.

In The 1970s And 1980s There Was So Little Decent Fiction For Young People, But We're Now In A Golden Age That Shows No Sign Of Fading. Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket Are Only Three Of The Best Known Among A Good Number Of Equals.

I Love Hbo Productions, Actually, Like 'the Wire.'

Over 85% Of All Statistics Are Made Up On The Spot.

I Can Write Pretty Much Anywhere.

Two People Who Are A Little Bit Deluded In Each Other's Favour. That's What Love Is, Isn't It?

A Half-read Book Is A Half-finished Love Affair.

Leaves Turned To Soil Beneath My Feet. Thus It Is, Trees Eat Themselves.

It's True, Reading Too Many Novels Makes You Go Blind.

The Healthy Can't Understand The Emptied, The Broken.

I'm Not From A Milieu Where High-register Language Or Philosophical Ideas Were Welcome.

Do," Said Louisa Finally, "whatever You Can't Not Do.

The Soul Is A Verb." He Impales A Lit Candle On A Spike. "not A Noun.

What Is "poker"? A Card Game Where Abler Liars Take Money Off Less Able Liars.

How Could I Know A Famished Heart Will Eat Its Mind? Can Kill Its Body?

The Earth's A Door If You Press Your Ear Against It.

Often I Think Boys Don’t Become Men. Boys Just Get Papier-mâchéd Inside A Man’s Mask. Sometimes You Can Tell The Boy Is Still In There.

As An Experienced Editor, I Disapprove Of Flashbacks, Foreshadowings, And Tricksy Devices; They Belong In The 1980s With M.a.s In Postmodernism And Chaos Theory.

People Are Obscenities. Would Rather Be Music Than Be A Mass Of Tubes Squeezing Semisolids Around Itself For A Few Decades Before Becoming So Dribblesome It'll No Longer Function.

I Think The Story Is The Most Ancient Form Of Human Entertainment.

Creation Never Ceased On The Sixth Evening, It Occurs To The Young Man. Creation Unfolds Around Us, Despite Us And Through Us At The Speed Of Days And Nights. And We Call It Love.

I Am, Emphatically. Mental Illness Triggered By Xperimental Error.

I'm A Novelist, That's How I Make My Livelihood, And I Concentrate On The Novels.

Power, Time, Gravity, Love. The Forces That Really Kick Ass Are All Invisible.

I...asked Why Purebloods Despised Me So. He Replied, 'what If The Difference Between Social Strata Stem Not From Genomics Or Inherent Xcellence Or Even Dollars, But Merely Differences In Knowledge? Would This Not Mean The Whole Pyramid Is Built On Shifting Sands?... Fabricants Are Mirrors Held Up To Purebloods' Consciences; What Purebloods See Reflected There Sickens Them. So They Blame You For Holding Up The Mirror

I Really Wish They Hadn't Made The Set Out Of Asbestos.

Truth Is Singular. Its 'versions' Are Mistruths.

If Swans Weren't Real Myths'd Make Up.

I Often Lose Myself In The Sudoku-like Challenges Of Making A Book Work.

Human Beings Need To Watch Out For Reasonless Niceness Too. It's Never Reasonless And Its Reason's Not Usually Nice.

... But It Is Attitude, Not Years, That Condemns One To The Ranks Of The Undead, Or Else Proffers Salvation. In The Domain Of The Young There Dwells Many An Undead Soul. They Rush About So, Their Inner Putrefaction Is Concealed For A Few Decades, That Is All.

There Are So Many Cities In Every Single City.

The Mind Has A Mind Of Its Own. It Shows Us Pictures. Pictures Of The Past And The Might-one-day-be. This Mind's Mind Exerts Its Own Will, Too, And Has Its Own Voice.

Clocks In Disagreement Are Worse Than No Clock At All.

Whoever Opined "money Can't Buy You Happiness" Obviously Had Far Too Much Of The Stuff.

Secrets Affect You More Than You’d Think. You Lie To Keep Them Hidden. You Steer Talk Away From Them. You Worry Someone’ll Discover Yours And Tell The World. You Think You Are In Charge Of The Secret, But Isn’t It The Secret Who’s Actually Using You?

If You’re In Your Life, Chance. Viewed From The Outside, Like A Book You’re Reading, It’s Fate All The Way.

Under The Enrichment Laws, Consumers Have To Spend A Fixed Quota Of Dollars Each Month, Depending On Their Strata. Hoarding Is An Anti-corpocratic Crime.

Right, My Phone. When These Things First Appeared, They Were So Cool. Only When It Was Too Late Did People Realize They Are As Cool As Electronic Tags On Remand Prisoners.

Little Girls Are Like Old Cats. If They Don't Like You Nothing On Earth Will Make Them Pretend To.

If I Want To Act Relaxed, It's Going To Take All My Cunning, Skill, And Concentration.

Spent The Fortnight Gone In The Music Room Reworking My Year's Fragments Into A 'sextet For Overlapping Soloists': Piano, Clarinet, 'cello, Flute, Oboe, And Violin, Each In Its Own Language Of Key, Scale, And Color. In The First Set, Each Solo Is Interrupted By Its Successor; In The Second, Each Interruption Is Recontinued, In Order. Revolutionary Or Gimmicky? Shan't Know Until It's Finished, And By Then It'll Be Too Late.

Time Is What Stops History Happening At Once; Time Is The Speed At Which The Past Disappears.

Love's Pure Free Joy When It Works, But When It Goes Bad You Pay For The Good Hours At Loan-shark Prices.

Taro Taught Me That People Respect Spirit, But Even Cowards Don't Respect Cowards.

Strip Back The Beliefs Pasted On By Governesses, Schools, And States, You Find Indelible Truths At One's Core.

- This Isn't An Interrogation Or A Trail. Your Version Of The Truth Is The Only Thing That Matters. -truth Is Singular. It's 'versions' Are Mistruths.

Dead Things Show You What You’ll Be Too One Day.

Lying's Wrong, But When The World Spins Backwards, A Small Wrong May Be A Big Right.

I Rarely Ever Put My Head Above The Rampart And See Where This Big Lumbering Behemoth Called 'global Literature' Is Going.

The Best Way To Get Out Of Debt Is Not To Seek To Get Out Of Debt, But To Seek To Create Wealth

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People. The People The Stories Use To Tell Themselves Are Not To Be Blamed

The Truth Of A Myth...is Not In Its Words But Its Patterns.

...it’s Not Just The Person Who Fills A House, It’s Their I’ll Be Back Later!s, Their Toothbrushes And Unused Hats And Coats, Their Belongingnesses.

Missing Someone

Reality Is The Page. Life Is The Word.

The Most Malicious God Is The God Of The Counted Chicken.

The Uncreated And The Dead Exist Solely In Our Actual And Virtual Pasts.

What Wouldn't I Give Now For A Never-changing Map Of The Ever-constant Ineffable? To Possess, As It Were, An Atlas Of Clouds.

Assured Her I've Never Loved Anyone Except Myself And Have No Intention Of Starting Now.

We Are Only What We Know, And I Wished To Be So Much More Than I Was, Sorely.

Dreams Are All I Have Ever Truly Owned.

I Can't Bear Living In This Huge Beautiful World And Not Try To Imitate It As Best I Can.

I Think We Think In Terms Of Stories.

I'm From A Time And Place Where Bigheadedness Was A Really Savage Crime, And You'd Get Cut Down For It By Your Peers And Parents.

Mother Used To Say Escape Is Never Further Than The Nearest Book.

The Better Organized The State, The Duller Its Humanity.

Words Are What You Fight With But What You Fight About Is Whether Or Not You're Afraid Of Them.

Words Are Very Powerful And Can Lead Anyone Reading Them Or Hearing Them, Into Contemplation And Insight. How The Mind Follows Suit Is Rarely Palpable Or Expected. This Impact Is Not A Matter Of Metaphysical Effects Nor Of An Unexplainable Phenomenon. It’s Simply Part Of Being Human.

The Rain's Innumerable Hooves Spatter On The Streets And Roofs.

'y' Is About The Weakest Letter Of All. 'y' Can't Make Up Its Mind If It's A Vowel Or A Consonant, Can It?

By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

Do Ants Get Headaches?

False Modesty Can Be Worse Than Arrogance.

Why Human Beings Despise What Is Beautiful And Good, And Seek To Destroy The Things They Need The Most

I Feel Like Something Important Has Happened To Me. Is This Possible?

It'll Be All Right." Julia's Gentleness Makes It Worse. "in The End, Jace." "it Doesn't Feel Very All Right." "that's Because It's Not The End.

War's An Auction Where Whoever Can Pay The Most In Damage And Still Be Standing Wins.

Implausible Truth Can Serve One Better Than Plausible Fiction

If We Believe That Humanity May Transcend Tooth And Claw, If We Believe Divers Races & Creeds Can Share This World As Peaceably As The Orphans Share Their Candlenut Tree, If We Believe Leaders Must Be Just, Violence Muzzled, Power Accountable & The Riches Of The Earth & Its Oceans Shared Equitably, Such A World Will Come To Pass.

Hate Eats The Hater The Way Ogres Eat Little Boys.

Once Any Tyranny Becomes Accepted As Ordinary, Its Victory Is Assured.

Any Society's Upper-crust Is Riddled With Immorality, How Else D'you Think They Keep Their Power? Reputation Is King Of The Public Sphere, Not Private. It Is Dethroned By Public Acts.

Good Moods’re As Fragile As Eggs...bad Moods’re As Fragile As Bricks.

Write Something Every Single Day, Even If It's Just Three Lines. And It Doesn't Matter If It's Any Good - Just Write Something Every Day.

The Human World Is Made Of Stories, Not People.

Try This For Deviancy: Fabricants Are Mirrors Held Up To Purebloods' Conscience; What Purebloods See Reflected There Sickens Them. So They Blame You For Holding The Mirror." I Hid My Shock By Asking When Purebloods Might Blame Themselves. Mephi Replied, "history Suggests, Not Until They Are Made To.

As Long As Our Civilisation Keeps Trundling Along Generally Forwards, Then There Is The Possibility Of A Future Where Ethnicity Is Merely An Interesting Badge, Not A Uniform You Can't Take Off.

I Think Words Operate Like Musical Notes That The Eyeball Hears.

Freedom!- Is The Fatuous Jingle Of Our Civilization, But Only Those Deprived Of It Have The Barest Inkling Re: What The Stuff Actually Is.

Anticipating The End Of The World Is Humanity's Oldest Passtime

End Of The World

Who Was Blowing On The Nape Of My Neck?

How Vulgar, This Hankering After Immortality, How Vain, How False. Composers Are Merely Scribblers Of Cave Paintings. One Writes Music Because Winter Is Eternal And Because, If One Didn't, The Wolves And Blizzards Would Be At One's Throat All The Sooner.

I've Become A Less Brave Traveller Since I Became A Dad, But In The Past I Was More Foolhardy Than Brave.

Books Don't Offer Real Escape, But They Can Stop A Mind Scratching Itself Raw.

Act', Implores The Ghost Of Future Regret. 'i Shan't Give You Another Chance'. [and So Jacob Does] 'damned Fool,' Groans The Demon Of Present Regret. 'what Have You Done?

I Recently Bought A Cat, But Took It Back A Day Later Because Our Personalities Clashed.

...now I'm A Spent Firework; But At Least I've Been A Firework.

Go To Hell, Willy, Our Souls Eat Poetry, But One Has Seven Deadly Sins To Feed!

Wars Are Never Cured, They Just Go Into Remission For A Few Years.

Our Lives Are Not Our Own. We Are Bound To Others, Past And Present, And By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

Why Does Any Martyr Cooperate With His Judases?...we See A Game Beyond The Endgame...as Seneca Warned Nero: No Matter How Many Of Us You Kill, You Will Never Kill Your Successor.

Oh, Diplomacy ... It Mops Up War's Spillages; Legitimizes Its Outcomes; Gives The Strong State The Means To Impose Its Will On A Weaker One, While Saving Its Fleets And Battalions For Weightier Opponents.

I Am Going To Tell You A Secret. Everything Is About Wanting. Everything. Things Happen Because Of People Wanting. Watch Closely, And You’ll See What I Mean.

For Me, Novels Coalesce Into Being, Rather Than Arrive Fully Formed.

Why Fight The 'natural' (oh, Weaselly Word!) Order Of Things? Why? Because Of This--one Fine Day, A Purely Predatory World Shall Consume Itself. In An Individual, Selfishness Uglifies The Soul; For The Human Species, Selfishness Is Extinction.

Yay, Old'uns' Smart Mastered Sicks, Miles, Seeds An' Made Miracles Ord'nary, But It Din't Master One Thing, Nay, A Hunger In The Hearts O' Humans, Yay, A Hunger For More.

Any Adaptation Is A Translation, And There Is Such A Thing As An Unreadably Faithful Translation; And I Believe A Degree Of Reinterpretatio N For The New Language May Be Not Only Inevitable But Desirable.

If Losers Can Exploit What Their Adversaries Teach Them, Yes, Losers Can Become Winners In The Long Term.

Memories Are Their Own Descendents Masquerading As The Ancestors Of The Present.

Writing Is Such A Damn Lonely Sickness.

In An Individual, Selfishness Uglifies The Soul; For The Human Species, Selfishness Is Extinction.

I Have Always Unswervingly Held, That God, In Our Civilizing World, Manifests Himself Not In The Miracles Of Biblical Age, But In Progress. It Is Progress That Leads Humanity Up The Ladder Towards The God-head. No Jacob's Ladder This, No, But Rather Civilization's Ladder, If You Will.

Strip Back The Beliefs Pasted On By Governesses, Schools, And States, You Find Indelible Truths At One's Core. Rome'll Decline And Fall Again, Cortés'll Lay Tenochtitlán To Waste Again, And Later, Ewing Will Sail Again, Adrian'll Be Blown To Pieces Again, You And I'll Sleep Under The Corsican Stars Again, I'll Come To Bruges Again, Fall In And Out Of Love With Eva Again, You'll Read This Letter Again, The Sun'll Grow Cold Again. Nietzsche's Gramophone Record. When It Ends, The Old One Plays It Again, For An Eternity Of Eternities.

One Fine Day A Predatory World Shall Consume Itself.

Don't Bemoan Your Misspent Life Quite Yet. Forgive Me For Flaunting My Experience, But You Have No Conception Of What A Misspent Life Constitutes.

Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

Faith, The Least Exclusive Club On Earth, Has The Craftiest Doorman. Every Time I've Stepped Through Its Wide-open Doorway, I Find Myself Stepping Out On The Street Again.

A Life Spent Shaping A World I Want Jackson To Inherit, Not One I Fear Jackson Shall Inherit, This Strikes Me As A Life Worth The Living.

Probably In A Parallel Universe Not Far From Here, I'm Working For Nintendo.

Parallel Universe

Times Are You Say A Person's B'liefs Ain't True, They Think You're Sayin' Their Lifes Ain't True An' Their Truth Ain't True.

The Body Is The Outermost Layer Of The Mind.

I Have Always Preferred Maps To Books. They Don't Answer You Back.

The Mind Abhors A Vacancy & Is Wont To People It With Phantoms.

We Looked At Each Other For The Last Time; Nothing Is As Eloquent As Nothing.

Folks With Most To Complain About Seldom Complain Most.

I Think All Writers Of My Age Who Are Brought Up On Films Probably By The Age Of 16 Have Seen Many More Films Than They Have Read Classics Of Literature. We Can't Help But Be Influenced By Film. Film Has Got Some Great Tricks That It's Taught Writers.

A Life Can Get Knocked Into A New Orbit By A Car Crash, A Lottery Win Or Just A Bleary-eyed Consultant Giving Bad News In A Calm Voice.

An Idler And A Sluggard Are As Different As A Gourmand And A Glutton.

Humans Live In A Pit Of Cheating, Exploiting, Hurting, Incarcerating. Every Time, The Species Wastes Some Part Of What It Could Be. This Waste Is Poisonous.

Probably" Is A Word With An Emergency Ejector Seat.

I Added 'writers' To My List Of People Not To Trust. They Make Everything Up.

I Wonder If You Encountered This Dictum First Spoken By A Twentieth-century Statesman: "an Abyss Cannot Be Crossed In Two Steps.

A Weapon Men Use Against Women Is The Refusal To Take Them Seriously.

You Say You're 'depressed' - All I See Is Resilience. You Are Allowed To Feel Messed Up And Inside Out. It Doesn't Mean You're Defective - It Just Means You're Human.

I Wonder How Many Years Suga Has Been Carrying His Curse Around With Him. I Forget That Other People In The World Have Broken Parts Too.

My Life Amounts To No More Than One Drop In A Limitless Ocean. Yet What Is Any Ocean, But A Multitude Of Drops?

People Pontificate, "suicide Is Selfishness." Career Churchmen Like Pater Go A Step Further And Call In A Cowardly Assault On The Living. Oafs Argue This Specious Line For Varying Reason: To Evade Fingers Of Blame, To Impress One's Audience With One's Mental Fiber, To Vent Anger, Or Just Because One Lacks The Necessary Suffering To Sympathize. Cowardice Is Nothing To Do With It - Suicide Takes Considerable Courage. Japanese Have The Right Idea. No, What's Selfish Is To Demand Another To Endure An Intolerable Existence, Just To Spare Families, Friends, And Enemies A Bit Of Soul-searching.

This World, He Thinks, Contains Just One Masterpiece, And That Is Itself.

The Revelation Of Sonmi 451 To Be Is To Be Perceived, And So To Know Thyself Is Only Possible Through The Eyes Of The Other. The Nature Of Our Immortal Lives Is In The Consequences Of Our Words And Deeds, That Go On And Are Pushing Themselves Throughout All Time. - Our Lives Are Not Our Own. From Womb To Tomb, We Are Bound To Others, Past And Present, And By Each Crime And Every Kindness, We Birth Our Future.

Maybe Then You Comprehend, Speaking One Language Only Is A Prison!

Foreign Language

Always, It Is The Poor People Who Pay. And Always, It Is The Poor People's Women Who Pay The Most.

Maybe The Meaning Of Life Lies In Looking For It

Meaning Of Life

What Sparks Wars? The Will To Power, The Backbone Of Human Nature. The Threat Of Violence, The Fear Of Violence, Or Actual Violence, Is The Instrument Of This Dreadful Will. You Can See The Will To Power In Bedrooms, Kitchens, Factories, Unions And The Borders Of States. Listen To This And Remember It. The Nation State Is Merely Human Nature Inflated To Monstrous Proportions. Qed, Nations Are Entities Whose Laws Are Written By Violence. Thus It Ever Was, So Ever Shall It Be.

The Spirit Was Willing But The Flesh Was Weak.

Faith Shall Save Your Soul From Death. Without Faith, Death Is A Drowning, The End Of Ends, And What Sane Man Wouldn't Fear That? But With Faith, Death Is Nothing Worse Than The End Of The Voyage We Call Life, And The Beginning Of An Eternal Voyage In A Company Of Our Loved Ones, With Griefs And Woes Smoothed Out, And Under The Capacity Of Our Creator.

A Mountain You're Plannin' On Climbin' Ain't The Same As The One You Ain't. It Ain't So Pretty.

As Many Truths As Men. Occasionally, I Glimpse A Truer Truth, Hiding In Imperfect Simulacrums Of Itself, But As I Approach, It Bestirs Itself & Moves Deeper Into The Thorny Swamp Of Dissent.

If War's First Victim Is Truth, Its Second Is Clerical Efficiency.

You Can Maintain Power Over People, As Long As You Give Them Something. Rob A Man Of Everything, And That Man Will No Longer Be In Your Power.

Perhaps All Human Interaction Is About Wanting And Getting.

Dreams Are Shores Where The Ocean Of Spirit Meets The Land Of Matter. Dreams Are Beaches Where The Yet-to-be, The Once-were, The Will-never-be May Walk Awhile With The Still-are.

The Weak Are Meat The Strong Do Eat.

Sometimes The Fluffy Bunny Of Incredulity Zooms Around The Bend So Rapidly That The Greyhound Of Language Is Left, Agog, In The Starting Cage.

Whoever Dies With The Most Stuff Wins.

So Winners, Hae-joo Proposed, Are The Real Losers Because They Learn Nothing? What, Then, Are Losers? Winners?

I Pass Through Many Me's In The Course Of My Day, Each One Selfish With His Time. The Lying-in-bed Me And The Enjoying-the-hot-shower Me Are Particularly Selfish. The Late Me Loathes The Pair Of Them.

This Isn’t Lust. Lust Wants, Does The Obvious Love Is Greedier. Love Wants Round-the-clock Care; Protection; Rings, Vows, Joint Accounts; Scented Candles On Birthdays; Life Insurance. Babies. Love’s A Dictator.

War May Be An Auction For Countries. For Soldiers It's A Lottery.

I Got A Rejection Letter From An Editor At Harpercollins, Who Included A Report From His Professional Reader. This Report Shredded My First-born Novel, Laughed At My Phrasing, Twirled My Lacy Pretensions Around And Gobbed Into The Seething Mosh Pit Of My Stolen Clichés. As I Read The Report, The World Became Very Quiet And Stopped Rotating. What Poisoned Me Was The Fact That The Report's Criticisms Were All Absolutely True. The Sound Of My Landlady Digging In The Garden Got The World Moving Again. I Slipped The Letter Into The Trash... Knowing I'd Remember Every Word.

Better A Soulless Clone... Than A Souled Roach.

She Has To Lose Her Pre-copernican View Of A Universe Revolving Around Herself.

It's A Small World. It Keeps Recrossing Itself.

History Admits No Rules; Only Outcomes.

I Still Haven't Quite Got Used To Eating Live Fish.

Science Devises Ever Bloodier Means Of War Until Humanity's Powers Of Destruction Overcome Our Powers Of Creation And Our Civilisation Drives Itself To Extinction.

A Book You Finish Reading Is Not The Same Book It Was Before You Read It.

As For Reading, I Wish I Had A Magic Door To A Library Where I Could Go In, Read For Days And Days, And Come Back In The Same Minute I Left. I'm Still Looking For The Door.

Wars Do Not Combust Without Warning. They Begin As Little Fires Over The Horizon. Wars Approach. A Wise Man Watches For The Smoke, And Prepares To Vacate The Neighborhood, Just Like Ayrs And Jocasta. My Worry Is That The Next War Will Be So Big, Nowhere With A Decent Restaurant Will Be Left Untouched.

What Do I Miss? Second-hand Bookshops Where I Can Find Things I Had No Idea I Wanted. Abebooks Helps, But It Doesn't Have That Smell.

Power. What Do We Mean? 'the Ability To Determine Another Man's Luck.' ...how Is It That Some Men Attain Mastery Over Others While The Vast Majority Live And Die As Minions, As Livestock? The Answer Is A Holy Trinity. First: God-given Gifts Of Charisma. Second: The Discipline To Nurture These Gifts To Maturity, For Though Humanity's Topsoil Is Fertile With Talent, Only One Seed In Ten Thousand Will Ever Flower -- For Want Of Discipline. Third: The Will To Power.

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