Reviews and Comments

1) "All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING"

2) "For whatever it's worth, here's what I believe. It took me a lot of time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right—just the way it has to be. In the past year, it's gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the right one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to: God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. God exists to be shaped. God is Change. This is the literal truth."

3) "Sometimes naming a thing—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it. The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed. I've tried to name it before. Failing that, I've tried to leave it unnamed. Neither effort has made me comfortable. Name plus purpose equals focus for me. Well, today, I found the name, found it while I was weeding the back garden and thinking about the way plants seed themselves, windborne, animalborne, waterborne, far from their parent plants. They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don't have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out. There are islands thousands of miles from anywhere—the Hawaiian Islands, for example, and Easter Island—where plants seeded themselves and grew long before any humans arrived. Earthseed. I am Earthseed. Anyone can be. Someday, I think there will be a lot of us. And I think we'll have to seed ourselves farther and farther from this dying place."

4) "I have read that the period of upheaval that journalists have begun to refer to as 'the Apocalypse' or more commonly, more bitterly, 'the Pox' lasted from 2015 through 2030—a decade and a half of chaos. This is untrue. The Pox has been a much longer torment. It began well before 2015, perhaps even before the turn of the millennium. It has not ended."

5) "Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of 'heathen houses of devil-worship,' he has a simple answer: 'Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.'"

6) "Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm. Partnership is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership is life. Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or avoided must somehow be partnered. Partner one another. Partner diverse communities. Partner life. Partner any world that is your home. Partner God. Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live."

7) "'We need the stars, Bankole. We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny gives us of ourselves as a growing, purposeful species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize, and die, we need the stars. That's why the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. I know you don't want to hear verses right now, but that one is... a major key to us, to human beings, I mean. When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.'"

8) "Dreamasks—also known as head cages, dream books, or simply, Masks—were new then, and were beginning to edge out some of the virtual-reality stuff. Even the early ones were cheap—big ski-mask-like devices with goggles over the eyes. Wearing them made people look not-quite-human. But the masks made computer-stimulated and guided dreams available to the public, and people loved them. Dreamasks were related to old-fashioned lie detectors, to slave collars, and to a frighteningly efficient form of audiovisual subliminal suggestion. In spite of the way they looked, Dreamasks were lightweight, clothlike, and comfortable. Each one offered wearers a whole series of adventures in which they could identify with any of several characters. They could live their character's fictional life complete with realistic sensation. They could submerge themselves in other, simpler, happier lives. The poor could enjoy the illusion of wealth, the ugly could be beautiful, the sick could be healthy, the timid could be bold..."

9) "'I wonder whether it was your abduction that made your father give up on Jarret.' 'Give up on him?' 'On him and on the United States. He's left the country, after all.' After a moment, she nodded. 'Yes. Although I'm still having trouble thinking of Alaska as a foreign country. I guess that should be easy now, since the war. But it doesn't matter. None of this matters. I mean, those people—that man and his kids who you just fed—they matter, but no one cares about them. Those kids are the future if they don't starve to death. But if they manage to grow up, what kind of men will they be?' 'That's what Earthseed was about,' I said. 'I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things always have been.' 'It is,' Len said. 'It is,' I repeated. 'There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren't, the cycles wouldn't keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They'll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it's only to begin a new one, a different one. 'Earthseed is about preparing to fulfill the Destiny. It's about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It's about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are. It's...' I glanced at Len, caught a little smile on her face, and wound down. 'It's about a lot more than that,' I said. 'But those are the bones.'"

10) "To survive, Know the past. Let it touch you. Then let The past Go."

1) "Already at work on the building site, which sprawled through the heart of Florence, were scores of other craftsmen: carters, bricklayers, leadbeaters, even cooks and men whose job it was to sell wine to the workers on their lunch breaks. From the piazza surrounding the cathedral the men could be seen carting bags of sand and lime, or else clambering about on wooden scaffolds and wickerwork platforms that rose above the neighboring rooftops like a great, untidy bird's nest. Nearby, a forge for repairing their tools belched clouds of black smoke into the sky, and from dawn to dusk the air rang with the blows of the blacksmith's hammer and with the rumble of oxcarts and the shouting of orders. Florence in the early 1400s still retained a rural aspect. Wheat fields, orchards, and vineyards could be found inside its walls, while flocks of sheep were driven bleating through the streets to the market near the Baptistery of San Giovanni. But the city also had a population of 50,000, roughly the same as London's, and the new cathedral was intended to reflect its importance as a large and powerful mercantile city. Florence had become one of the most prosperous cities in Europe. Much of its wealth came from the wool industry started by the Umiliati monks soon after their arrival in the city in 1239. Bales of English wool—the finest in the world—were brought from monasteries in the Cotswolds to be washed in the river Arno, combed, spun into yarn, woven on wooden looms, then dyed beautiful colors: vermilion, made from cinnabar gathered on the shores of the Red Sea, or a brilliant yellow procured from the crocuses growing in meadows near the hilltop town of San Gimignano. The result was the most expensive and most sought-after cloth in Europe."

2) "Yet by 1418 what was by far the grandest building project in Florence had still to be completed. A replacement for the ancient and dilapidated church of Santa Reparata, the new cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was intended to be one of the largest in Christendom. Entire forests had been requisitioned to provide timber for it, and huge slabs of marble were being transported along the Arno on flotillas of boats. From the outset its construction had as much to do with civic pride as religious faith: the cathedral was to be built, the Commune of Florence had stipulated, with the greatest lavishness and magnificence possible, and once completed it was to be 'a more beautiful and honourable temple than any in any other part of Tuscany.' But it was clear that the builders faced major obstacles, and the closer the cathedral came to completion, the more difficult their task would become."

3) "Filippo, on the other hand, offered a simpler and more daring solution: he proposed to do away with the centering altogether. This was an astounding proposal. Even the smallest arches were built over wooden centering. How then would it be possible to span the enormous diameter called for in the 1367 model without any support, particularly when the bricks at the top of the vault would be inclined at 60-degree angles to the horizontal? So astonishing was the plan that many of Filippo's contemporaries considered him a lunatic. And it has likewise confounded more recent commentators who are reluctant to believe that such a feat could actually have been possible."

4) "Given the experimental nature of Filippo's plan, the 30-braccia limit seems to have been a wise precaution, especially since a sound logic governs the restriction. At a height of 30 braccia the bed joints of the masonry would have risen to form an angle of 30 degrees to the horizontal, or just inside the critical angle of sliding. Friction alone would keep the stones in place up to an angle of 30 degrees, even when the mortar was green; therefore, no centering would have been required until that point. Above that level, however, each course of masonry would incline more sharply, reaching a maximum angle, near the top, of 60 degrees to the horizontal. No doubt it was impossible for the wardens to imagine how these courses might be held in place without centering of some sort."

5) "Religious feasts were numerous in Florence, averaging almost one per week. The populace was accustomed to grand spectacles on these occasions: to the sight of priests and monks in rich habits of gold and silk bearing through the streets the standards of their orders and their most prized relics, all to the tolling of bells, the blaring of trumpets, the chanting of songs and the splashing of holy water. But in 1436 the Feast of the Annunciation, observed on the twenty-fifth of March, was the occasion for a celebration that was spectacular even by the standards of Florence. On this day Pope Eugenius IV processed eastward to the center of the city from his residence in Santa Maria Novella. He was accompanied by seven cardinals, thirty-seven bishops, and nine members of the Florentine government, including Cosimo de' Medici. The procession moved along a 1,000-foot-long wooden platform, six feet in height, that was bedecked with sweet-smelling flowers and herbs. This gangway had been designed by Filippo to carry the pope safely above the crowds teeming in the streets below, a method of crowd control evidently selected in place of a much-used alternative, that of throwing coins into the street in order to scatter the people and keep them from pressing too closely upon the Holy Father. As the entourage turned into the Via de' Cerretani and creaked across the boardwalk in the direction of the thronging Piazza San Giovanni, the new cathedral rose suddenly into view. After 140 years of construction, the time had finally come to consecrate Santa Maria del Fiore."

1) "The sky above the Mississippi River stretched out like a song. The river was still in the windless afternoon, its water a yellowish-brown from the sediment it carried across thousands of miles of farmland, cities, and suburbs on its way south. At dusk, the lights of the Crescent City Connection, a pair of steel cantilever bridges that cross the river and connect the east and west banks of New Orleans, flickered on. Luminous bulbs ornamented the bridges' steel beams like a congregation of fireflies settling onto the backs of two massive, unbothered creatures. A tugboat made its way downriver, pulling an enormous ship in its wake. The sounds of the French Quarter, just behind me, pulsed through the brick sidewalk underfoot. A pop-up brass band blared into the early-evening air, its trumpets, tubas, and trombones commingling with the delight of a congregating crowd; a young man drummed on a pair of upturned plastic buckets, the drumsticks in his hands moving with speed and dexterity; people gathered for photos along the river's edge, hoping to capture an image of themselves surrounded by a recognizable piece of quintessential New Orleans iconography. After the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1808, about a million people were transported from the upper South to the lower South. More than one hundred thousand of them were brought down the Mississippi River and sold in New Orleans."

2) "What they gave our country, and all they stole from it, must be understood together."

3) "Although Monticello has been open to the public since the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation purchased the property in 1923, the plantation's public wrestling with Jefferson's relationship to slavery began in 1993, as part of the foundation's Getting Word oral history project, in which the foundation interviewed the descendants of enslaved people from Monticello in an effort to preserve those histories. The oral histories represented an attempt to get the descendants to share stories their elders might have shared with them. The stories that arose from Getting Word became part of the tours Monticello created based on the lives of the enslaved population there. 'This is how the word is passed down,' remarked one of the descendants in an interview for the project."

4) "I remembered feeling crippling guilt as I silently wondered why every enslaved person couldn't simply escape like Douglass, Tubman, and Jacobs had. I found myself angered by the stories of those who did not escape. Had they not tried hard enough? Didn't they care enough to do something? Did they choose to remain enslaved? This, I now realize, is part of the insidiousness of white supremacy; it illuminates the exceptional in order to implicitly blame those who cannot, in the most brutal circumstances, attain superhuman heights. It does this instead of blaming the system, the people who built it, the people who maintained it."

5) "Only a few minutes after we entered the Red Hat we were told it was time to get back on the bus. I kept sitting in the chair and clutched my hands on its rough wooden edges before lifting myself up and walking toward the haze of the door. As I stepped out of the Red Hat, the air smelled like smoke even though nothing was on fire. Or maybe everything was."

6) "The erection of Confederate monuments in the early twentieth century came at a moment when many Confederate veterans were beginning to die off in large numbers. A new generation of white Southerners who had no memory of the war had come of age, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy had raised enough money to build memorials to these men. The goal, in part, was to teach the younger generations of white Southerners who these men had been and that the cause they had fought for was an honorable one. But there is another reason, not wholly disconnected from the first. These monuments were also built in an effort to reinforce white supremacy at a time when Black communities were being terrorized and Black social and political mobility impeded. In the late nineteenth century, states began implementing Jim Crow laws to cement this country's racial caste system. Social and political backlash to Reconstruction-era attempts to build an integrated society was the backdrop against which the first monuments arose. These monuments served as physical embodiments of the terror campaign directed at Black communities. Another spike in construction of these statues came in the 1950s and 1960s, coinciding, not coincidentally, with the civil rights movement."

7) "As I looked at Edwards's statue and then back at Ashton Villa, I thought about how Juneteenth is a holiday that inspires so much celebration, born from circumstances imbued with so much tragedy. Enslavers in Texas, and across the South, attempted to keep Black people in bondage for months, and theoretically years, after their freedom had been granted. Juneteenth, then, is both a day to solemnly remember what this country has done to Black Americans and a day to celebrate all that Black Americans have overcome. It is a reminder that each day this country must consciously make a decision to move toward freedom for all of its citizens, and that this is something that must be done proactively; it will not happen on its own. The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting."

8) "By the early nineteenth century, the New York financial industry became even more deeply entrenched in chattel slavery. Money from New York bankers went on to finance every facet of the slave trade: New York businessmen built the ships, shipped the cotton, and produced the clothes that enslaved people wore. The financial capital in the North allowed slavery in the South to flourish. As the cotton trade expanded, New York City became the central port for shipments of raw cotton moving between the American South and Europe. By 1822, more than half of the goods shipped out of New York's harbor were produced in Southern states. Cotton alone was responsible for more than 40 percent of the city's exported goods."

9) "The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories. Across the United States, and abroad, there are places whose histories are inextricably tied to the story of human bondage. Many of these places directly confront and reflect on their relationship to that history; many of these places do not. But in order for our country to collectively move forward, it is not enough to have a patchwork of places that are honest about this history while being surrounded by other spaces that undermine it. It must be a collective endeavor to learn and confront the story of slavery and how it has shaped the world we live in today."

1) "In a labyrinth constructed out of a rosebush in the Golden Mile neighborhood of Montreal, two little girls were standing back‑to‑back with pistols pointed up toward their chins. They began to count out loud together, taking fifteen paces each."

2) "The house in the Golden Mile was their ticket to security and prosperity. Mr. and Mrs. Arnett were both determined to use their address to climb to the top of the social ladder. Mr. Arnett was a politician known for his zealous advocacy of moral decency. He repeatedly requested that prostitutes and houses of ill repute be closed down. The minute he criticized a play, it extended its run, knowing full well the publicity would bring people out in droves. His address loaned him an air of respectability. The illusion of wealth was what had kept his career afloat. The Arnetts often thought of selling it because they needed the money. But they knew if they did sell it, they would no longer have the status of living in the Golden Mile."

3) "Sadie took a notebook out of her basket and scribbled a thought down with a fountain pen. Marie was overcome by a desire to know what Sadie had written. What was it like to have a thought so interesting it belonged in a notebook? She didn’t know whether she had thoughts like that. She felt that she didn’t leave a thought in her head long enough for it to be organized, thoughtful, and worth recording."

4) "Marie was immediately smitten by the manner in which Sadie complained about things. Sadie analyzed everything. She found everything wanting. Her distaste for the world around her caused her to visualize and desire more. Marie had never realized how intelligent being negative made you."

5) "Before she had met Sadie, she had always been the best girl her age at whatever she did. But now there was someone else their age who was very good at things. While this was fascinating and attractive, she found it stirred odd and ugly emotions in herself. It planted the seed of jealousy in her. And that seed began to grow and it bore thoughts that were like tendrils. Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive."

6) "She would be a different person after this. She knew what she was capable of. That was perhaps a definition of innocence: not knowing what one was capable of."

7) "There was never a moment of peace and quiet in the city. It was always in the middle of building itself."

8) "She closed her eyes and absorbed the violence that was spoken from one lover to another."

9) "She had so many so many fingers at her disposal now. She had been so right to give away one. Look how many she had in exchange. She could do anything with them. She could pick locks, she could slit throats, she could light fires. With enough fingers, she could pull a building to the ground."

10) "Outside, the snow was falling down in Montreal in a way that it never did anywhere else in the world. It was coming down so thick. Its snowflakes were made out of fur. They were in a snow globe that had been shaken wildly and then put back on the shelf ever so gently and allowed to rest. The roses were dreaming underneath the ground."

1) "Back in the real world, Pony didn't have a clue what his startup's business model would be. The rough idea was that they would create a product that combines the pager and the then-nascent internet. Pony reconnected with two other classmates: Chen Yidan, who was working at the Shenzhen quarantine bureau, and Xu Chenye, who was part of the telecommunications bureau. They had one big problem: none of them knew anything about sales. Enter Jason Zeng Liqing. Unlike the initial founding quartet of self-proclaimed nerds, Jason was an outgoing, articulate and towering presence. A cadre at the Shenzhen telecommunications bureau, he once convinced a local property developer to invest 1.2 million yuan in building the first walled-off compound in the country to be entirely covered by broadband. The five clicked, and Jason took on responsibility for sales. Pony would take charge of product and strategy. That division of duties between the founders, and Jason's own dominant personality, planted the seeds of a rift that would eventually see Jason marginalised. Pony registered a startup for 500,000 yuan, equivalent to sixty-two years of the average Chinese wage at the time. His dad helped him file for the company name. After trying out three that were already taken, he requested the moniker Teng Xun - the first character alluding to part of Pony's Chinese name (Ma Huateng), the second meaning speed and information. In English, the name Tencent paid homage to Lucent Technologies. Because both Pony and Zhang Zhidong hadn't officially resigned at the time, they put Pony's mother down as owner - for about a year, the Chairman of Tencent was his mum, Huang Huiqing."

2) "How times have changed. Nowhere was that transformation more evident than in the capital of Beijing itself. That national psyche is reflected in the speed of change the capital constantly undergoes. Every few months, it's stippled with a new skyscraper, subway station, night club or luxury residential complex with names like Palm Springs or Park Avenue. In a city where the pollution can be so thick with particles that the act of breathing is akin to eating air, the willow-flanked streets spewing catkins in spring are bulldozed every few months and reborn with monikers like Innovation Street. The landlocked city still shrouds you in the scent of sulphur dioxide and coal the moment you step off the plane. For those passing through, it presages coughs and rhinitis; some would joke 'ten years off your health.' But to me it's always the scent of home - burning stubble in the wheat fields outside the Fourth Ring Road, where the Olympic Bird's Nest Stadium now stands; kebab stalls tucked in the hutongs around the iconic Drum Tower, fanned by grizzled migrants with pastel-hued blow-dryers; whiffs of petrichor washing away the humidity after the first autumn rain; and tobacco-choked night clubs near the Worker's Stadium, where Lamborghinis moonlight as Uber rides to pick up girls. One of my foreign friends calls it 'the developing economy scent.' To me, in an ironic way, it's the scent of hope and ambition."

3) "In late November 2013, Pony brought up a concept known as Internet+ that would be elevated by the government to a national strategic level within two years. The idea was you could topple and revolutionise any industry if you linked it with the internet. Link the web with retail and you get e-commerce, with entertainment and you get online gaming, But there could be a lot more sectors that could be transformed, such as transportation, logistics, manufacturing and - most immediately - neighbourhood services."

4) "In early 2012, Wang and Cheng saw a smartphone app called Momo, a Tinder-like dating app that allowed people to identify the location of other users on an online map. Wang says that the notion of tracking attractive females on phones piqued their interest in the enormous potential of a smartphone's GPS capabilities."

5) "'The most important thing is to drive yourself to a state of despair, and then God will open a window for you. So up till today, we think that money is just one element of resources, but it is never the most important. There will always be someone who is richer than you. The most important thing is your persistence,' said Cheng."

6) "Wang says Didi contemplated expanding into the US. Instead, in September 2015, it invested $100 million in Uber's American rival, Lyft. According to Wang, it was less about undermining Uber than about gaining negotiating leverage. 'The purpose of them grabbing a lock of our hair and us grabbing their beard isn't really to kill the other person, he says. 'Everyone is just trying to win a right to negotiate in the future.'"

7) "The metaverse, in its simplest terms, is embodied by the world depicted in Stephen Spielberg's Ready Player One, where people live and play in an immersive virtual reality. It's a place where they're free to parachute off Mount Everest, ascend the Great Pyramids of Giza, race against King Kong across New York in a sports car. It's a place where people could spend the better part of their day at work, presiding over meetings with hundreds of others, even (eventually) feel another person's grip via special suits with sensors that can physically manifest their online avatars actions in the real world."

8) "Pony's conundrum is how to propel Tencent into the future while appeasing his political masters - an incredibly delicate manoeuvre with unimaginable stakes. Given the extraordinary achievements of the past two decades, some may argue Pony is duty-bound to try. Who better than the visionary founder of the world's largest online entertainment empire to square that circle, to fashion a formula that will work for a fifth of the global population? And so the billionaire might not be bowing out anytime soon. Perhaps it's not even up to him. For the Party, it would be much easier to have one mighty all-knowing yet obedient company to rule all than play whack-a-mole with potentially disruptive forces."

1) "Traditional names went against the government's assimilation objectives; the government feared that leaving Indigenous people with their traditional names would take away their motivation to assimilate. Traditionally, Indians had neither a Christian name nor a surname. They had hereditary names, spirit names, family names, clan names, animal names, or nicknames. Hereditary names, in some cultures, are considered intangible wealth and carry great responsibility and certain rights. Hereditary names have been described as being analogous to royal titles such as Duke of Edinburgh. In many cultures, the birth name was just for that one stage of life, and additional names were given to mark milestones, acts of bravery, or feats of strength. None of the great heritage, symbolism, or tradition associated with names was recorded, recognized, or respected during the renaming process."

2) "In order to obtain a permit to pass, Indians would occasionally have to travel many days by foot to the Indian agent's house, not knowing if he would be there when they arrived. If the agent was away, they would either have to camp and wait, or return home. The pass system was also a means of maintaining a separation between Indians and the European farmers, which seems illogical considering the government's goal of assimilation—it's hard to achieve assimilation if the target population is isolated on reserves. The pass system restricted Indians' access to local towns in order to prevent Indian farmers from wasting their time when they should be tending their crops, which they were restricted from selling. The pass system additionally supported the government's attempts to quash potlatches, the Sun Dance, and other cultural practices."

3) "The right to vote, which most Canadians take for granted, was a hard-fought battle for Indigenous Peoples. In most parts of Canada, Indians were offered the right to vote at the time of Confederation—but only if they gave up their treaty rights and Indian status. Understandably, few were willing to do this. Métis people were not excluded from voting as few were covered by treaties and there was nothing to justify disqualifying them. Inuit were excluded from voting and no steps were taken to grant them the right to vote as most communities were geographically isolated. In the absence of special efforts to enable them to vote, the Inuit had no means of exercising the right."

4) "Indigenous self-government is often referred to as an 'inherent' right that pre-existed long before European settlement. For this reason, some Indigenous Peoples balk at the concept of Canadian governments granting them self-government, because they believe the Creator gave them the responsibilities of self-government and that that right has never been surrendered; it was simply taken by government legislation. In this light, self-government does not have to be recognized by federal or provincial governments because the right continues to exist."

1) "The first astrologer I met—later there were to be many others—was introduced to me early in 1943 by Sefton Delmer, who was by far the most imaginative and skilful exponent of 'black' psychological warfare techniques that I encountered during close on four years' employment at the Political Warfare Executive. There were two sides to the department's output: BBC broadcasts to Germany and enemy-occupied Europe, also leaflets bearing the imprint of H. M. Government and dropped by the Royal Air Force, were all 'white'. 'Black' operations, however, never indicated their British origin. Various 'black' broadcasting stations skilfully gave the impression that they were being operated inside Germany, and great pains were taken to ensure that 'black' printed matter looked as if it had actually been produced there. 'Black' material was not delivered to Germany in bulk by the RAF but was conveyed by underground channels, hence in relatively small quantities."

2) "[While] both astrology and those who practise it continue to puzzle me, I believe that the symbolism they use, but so rarely appear to understand, has a certain objective beauty, even logic. The possible meaning of the symbols, in their ever-varying combinations, can sometimes be sensed in the course of a subjective, incommunicable experience. The magic spell is broken the moment one tries to translate everything into ordinary, everyday words. Hence my theory that astrology would be fine without the astrologers."

3) "During the final decade of his long professional career Morrison-Zadkiel was little in the public eye. The 1862 almanac was the last in which Zadkiel advertised his willingness to accept professional work and Samuel Smith made his final appearance in 1863 when Zadkiel stated that 'all letters or applications on any subject whatever' were to be sent to his alter ego at Brompton post office. In the 1870 almanac, which was published in the autumn of 1869, he failed to predict the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, but announced the existence of The Most Ancient Order of the Suastika, or Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross. The subscription for an 'Apprentice Brother' was a modest 10s. 6d. Not to be outdone, Mr Sparkes, who edited the rival Raphael almanac, advertised The Society of the Most Ancient Magi, 'instituted for the especial purpose of advocating astrology in its purity, and for the spreading of Occult Knowledge'."

4) "A surprisingly large number of Germans, including many well-educated men and women, began to study astrology in the early 1920s. The reason for this sudden preoccupation with a hitherto unfashionable, even mildly disreputable area, is not difficult to discover. The aftermath of military defeat, with all its problems and uncertainties, including a runaway currency inflation which was only brought under control at the end of 1923, persuaded many to look to 'the stars' for information and portents of better times to come. Before 1914 the comparatively few German astrologers were mostly Theosophists or occultists or both. They regarded astrology as an essentially Hermetic science. However, a large proportion of the newcomers were interested in neither Theosophy, its offspring Anthroposophy, nor traditional occultism, and preferred to think of astrology as a science in its own right which, given time and the breakdown of traditional prejudices, would be widely accepted as such."

5) "While serving on the Russian front during the 1914-18 war Witte attempted to predict the times of Russian artillery barrages on the basis of a careful astrological record of previous ones. Given this or that combination of cosmic factors, then the Russian guns might be expected to open fire at a given moment. That, at least, was the theory. Witte, however, was puzzled by the fact that Russian shells frequently exploded in the Russian lines when, pace the stars, they should have remained silent. Intrigued by this illogical state of affairs, he sought for an answer. Eureka, it was found. These inexplicable manifestations could only be due to the influence of a planet or planets, as yet unidentified, beyond the orbit of Neptune. This deduction led to the 'discovery' of a hypothetical planet which was subsequently named Cupido. Later he and his friend Friedrich Sieggrün found seven more Transneptunian bodies which they called, in the order of their presumed distance from the Sun, Hades, Zeus, Kronos, Apollon, Admetos, Vulkanus and Poseidon. The next task was to calculate ephemerides so astrologers could incorporate these hypothetical planets in horoscopes. I have no idea how this was done."

6) "Others who met Krafft much later also recalled his gnomelike appearance. Countess Keyserling wrote in English: 'He was a queer little fellow, looked like a gnome; very pale and with burning black eyes; rather decadent like many Swiss people whose ancestors lived in a valley and inbred a lot... There was some flame burning in him, but a cold fire, like one of those dancing lights one reads about in books, which lead people astray in a swamp.'"

7) "Very little is known about the early stages of Krafft's ambitious plan, but its broad outlines can be deduced from his correspondence and publications. He sensibly decided to ignore the old astrological Tradition, with its mass of vague and often conflicting statements, and hoped to discover whether the objective statistical analysis of the factors in a large number of horoscopes would produce any data that was outside the law of mathematical probability. The presence of such data would not necessarily prove the validity of the Tradition but, he supposed, would at least indicate the existence of astral 'phenomena' as yet unknown to orthodox scientists. Hence it was not his purpose to establish, for example, that Moon in Libra in the sixth House means this or that but, rather, to identify unexpected angular frequencies or equally unexpected groupings of planets in any small sector of the 360° of the ecliptic between 0° Aries and 29° Pisces."

8) "Krafft claimed to have discovered correlations between cosmic cycles or periodicities, e.g. the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction (19.83 years), and economic fluctuations or crises. He had made a particular study of William Beveridge's 'Wheat Prices and Rain Fall in Western Europe' (in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society), and H. L. Moore's Generating Economic Cycles, New York, 1923. Both these researchers had identified economic cycles but had not associated them with cosmic phenomena. Krafft felt sure that the latter must be present and made two large-scale investigations covering German wheat prices, 1800-1930, and American railway share prices, 1831-1932. All manner of previously unsuspected related planetary periodicities and sub-periodicities were found. In fact, Krafft being the man he was, it would have been surprising if he had not discovered them."

9) [Questionnaire from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt] "11. Should members of different races (Aryans, Jews, Chinese and Negroes) — born at the same place under identical constellations expect the same astrological interpretations? If yes, then do you not admit the racial requirements of fate?"

10) "Copies of two papers alleged to have been written by Krafft at this time were in Herr Goerner's possession when I saw him. He told me that he had taken them with him when he was eventually released in April 1943. They are of interest for two reasons. Firstly, apart from a curious circumstance in connection with the horoscope of General Sir Claude Auchinleck, they represent such futile examples of short essays or background notes obviously written for psychological warfare purposes, that one can only wonder at the stupidity of the people who used Kraft's services for this purpose. Secondly, if Krafft was really responsible for these productions, he either had his tongue in his cheek or actually believed in his own nonsense."

11) "It was probably Krafft's realisation that his sole function was to provide astrological fodder for processing by hacks in the Propaganda Ministry that contributed as much as anything else to his subsequent nervous breakdown, for when he first arrived at the Muratti building he had supposed that he had something important to contribute to the German war effort. Symptoms of a kind familiar to psychiatrists now developed: he who had always been so tallkative and willing to communicate became increasingly withdrawn and silent."

1) "The Hard Switch is coming. This is the name people have given to the point when alcanite runs out. The once commonplace mineral that enables inter-system jump navigation. When the last piece has gone, the vast, diverse and scattered inhabitants of the galaxy will be stuck wherever they are. Some will have the means to choose this. Others will take what they've got. Or at least the best they can get."

2) "'Welcome! Oh, what's this? A pet?' 'Don't... touch... the glass.' Hhhrrrkkk...! 'I'm an engineer.'"

3) "'Hallsman.' 'Fuck! You scared me. This is a very alarmist way to deliver my payment.'"

4) "'They increased the size of the landing disc to take mega-freight, in a bid to get as much mineral off-planet before The Switch. People here are working overtime to make as much out of it as possible before it all shuts down. Makes no sense though, when all planets are isolated again, economies will become localised and no one has any idea what the Standard will be worth here by then. But no one is thinking long term, everyone believes they have a plan to get off-world before the bridges go down. They think they're unique in that too. But in reality the maths doesn't work. How about you?' 'Ah, don't worry about us. We've got a plan.' 'Haha. Of course.'"

5) "'Brace yourselves, this won't be graceful.'"

1) "From across the woods, as if by common accord, birds left their trees and darted upward. I joined them, flew among them, they did not recognize me as something apart from them, and I was happy, so happy, because for the first time in years, and forevermore, I had not killed, and never would."

2) "We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us."

3) "Oh, God, what a beautiful world! The autumn colors, that glinting river, that lead-colored cloud pointing down like a rounded arrow at that half-remodeled McDonald's standing above I-90 like a castle."

4) "Yeah, right. Like any of that was happening. Like he was racing back. They'd see through him. They'd fry his ass. People were always seeing through him and frying his ass. When he'd stolen Kirk Desner's flip-downs, the kids on the team had seen through him and fried his ass. The time he'd cheated on Syl, Syl had seen through him, broken off their engagement, and cheated on him with Charles, which had fried his ass possibly worse than any single other ass frying he'd ever had, in a life that, it recently seemed, was simply a series of escalating ass fries."

5) "So goodnight to all future generations. Please know I was a person like you, I too breathed air and tensed legs while trying to sleep and, when writing with pencil, sometimes brought pencil to nose to smell."

6) "I took me to the Banks of the River, and tarried there awhile, as the lowering Sun made one with the Water, giving generously of Itself & its Divers Colors, in a Splay of Magnificence that preceded a most wonderful Silence."

7) "Yes, Suzanne said. We also have a pool. You should come over this summer. It's cool if you swim with your shirt on. And also, yes to there being something to us. You are by far the most insightful boy in our class. Even when I take into consideration the boys I knew in Montreal, I am just like: No one can compare."

1) "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."

2) "There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought. Nanny entered this infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees. Towards morning she muttered, 'Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you.' She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was dead. So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman."

3) "The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired. She wasn't petal-open anymore with him. She was twenty-four and seven years married when she knew. She found that out one day when he slapped her face in the kitchen. It happened over one of those dinners that chasten all women sometimes. They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans. Janie was a good cook, and Joe had looked forward to his dinner as a refuge from other things. So when the bread didn't rise, and the fish wasn't quite done at the bone, and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store. Janie stood where he left her for unmeasured time and thought. She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of Jody tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over. In a way she turned her back upon the image where it lay and looked further. She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them."

4) "She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop. Man attempting to climb to painless heights from his dung hill. Then one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store and prostrating itself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes. Somebody near about making summertime out of lonesomeness."

5) "She got up to stir around and see if she could find him, and found herself too worn out to do much. All she found out was that she was too old a vessel for new wine."

6) "All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."

7) "In a little wind-lull, Tea Cake touched Janie and said, 'Ah reckon you wish now you had of stayed in yo' big house 'way from such as dis, don't yuh?' 'Naw.' 'Naw?' 'Yeah, naw. People don't die till dey time come nohow, don't keer where you at. Ah'm wid mah husband in uh storm, dat's all.' 'Thanky, Ma'am. But 'sposing you wuz tuh die, now. You wouldn't git mad at me for draggin' yuh heah?' 'Naw. We been tuhgether round two years. If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all. Ah wuz fumblin' round and God opened de door.' He dropped to the floor and put his head in her lap. 'Well then, Janie, you meant whut you didn't say, 'cause Ah never knowed you wuz so satisfied wid me lak dat. Ah kinda thought—' The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

8) "'Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers gointuh worry they guts into fiddle strings till dey find out whut we been talkin' 'bout. Dat's all right, Pheoby, tell 'em. Dey gointuh make 'miration 'cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.'"

1) "It is 1305 in Padua, Italy, and Giotto is showing his assistant where to spread today's fresh plaster on the chapel wall. He is going to paint on it while it is still damp using a technique called buon fresco, so his colours sink into the plaster to form a luminous wall painting. It is quite a challenge, knowing just how much plaster to apply. He has to paint the whole lot in one day or it will dry out and his colours will no longer be locked in but will sit on top. He knows what he is doing though - he has been painting frescoes in Enrico Scrovegni's private chapel for over two years now. The chapel will soon be complete, the walls covered in frescoes and the ceiling twinkling with gold stars against a dark blue heavenly sky."

2) "It is midnight on 14 May 1504 as a giant naked man begins to move through Florence's silent streets. The man is David, Michelangelo's most ambitious sculpture to date. It has taken him two years to carve and has taken the cathedral board almost as long to agree on where to locate it. Michelangelo signed a contract to make a colossal sculpture for the top of the cathedral's façade but ultimately the board decided to give it a more public home. It is now to be placed outside the Palazzo della Signoria, home to Florence's government."

3) "Claude's collectors were not Poussin's intellectuals but the aristocracy of Europe. In Claude's paintings, trees again frame the landscape and draw us in to the view. In Pastoral Landscape from 1647 the trees flank the river, which lures us further into the scene as we follow its path to the hazy mountains in the distance. People are present only to give scale and pinpoints of colour. In many of his scenes the sun is rising, casting a golden glow over every leaf and blade of grass. The rich morning light hovers over, under and in front of everything it touches. Landscape is not natural; it doesn't simply exist. Landscape is not the land itself but a carefully selected view that is sketched or painted to tell a particular story of man's relationship to the earth. For Poussin and Claude it is dotted with fictitious Roman temples and harks back to the dawn of classicism. For Dutch artists, by contrast, landscape reflected aspects of contemporary life. Windmills and churches rise from flat swathes of land; boats and ships set sail under heavy skies. The rise in Dutch landscape painting was fuelled by the interests of the middle-class collectors who bought them. They didn't live in private palaces or cathedral cloisters but out there, in the real world, where their ships bobbed at anchor and their windmills turned in the fields. They had fought hard for their land, battling rival nations and even the sea itself, by pumping low-lying lakes dry to create more land for farming."

4) "Shortly after this exhibition [Jacob Epstein] dismantled Rock Drill and amputated the figure at the waist. He removed one arm before casting it in bronze and later exhibited the mutilated torso without the drill. The First World War, which had started in 1914, stripped him of his enthusiasm for futuristic machinery. He wrote that the Rock Drill figure now represented the armed, sinister figure of today and tomorrow. No humanity, only the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into? The battle droids in Star Wars bear an uncanny resemblance to Epstein's original figure - inhuman robots each wielding an automatic weapon."

1) "J'ai loué un petit chalet avec ma fille pour quelques jours, loin de la ville. En fait, c'est elle qui l'a trouvé sur Internet. Une annulation de dernière minute."

2) "— J'ai pris une douche pis toute, ça fait du bien! C'est capoté, cette bécosse-là, mais ça marche bien pareil! C'est quoi, la toune que tu jouais? — Mazurka des planètes. — C'est beau, ça fitte avec ici, je trouve. — Oui, c'est très marin. — J'ai faim, je fais ma spécialité: grilled-cheese-cretons, t'en veux? — Pour sûr!"

3) "Quelques semaines après les obsèques, je suis allé chercher des trucs qu'il désirait nous laisser, à ma sœur et à moi. Ça tenait dans deux sacs IGA. Il ne nous a pas laissé d'argent, il n'en avait pas, ce qui n'était pas vraiment une surprise. Dans le premier sac, il y avait des enveloppes avec des photos de ma grand-tante, de ma grand-mère et de mon grand-père, des certificats de naissance, des passeports, des papiers d'immigration datant de leur arrivée au Canada dans les années 1930. Il y avait aussi tout un fatras de vieilles correspondances, des cartes postales écrites par des gens dont je n'avais jamais entendu parler, des médailles de guerre, des chaînettes, des breloques, quelques bijoux sans valeur, deux vieilles montres qui ne fonctionnaient plus, quelques décorations à chapeaux et des fleurs en corde que ma tante Janette fabriquait."

4) "Comment en suis-je arrivé là? Il y a des jours où je ne le sais plus vraiment. Avec le temps, c'est devenu flou. J'admets que je suis en grande partie responsable de mon naufrage, mais tout de même. Il y a cinq ans que le navire a sombré et que je flotte, encore accroché aux débris. Il faudrait tout de même avancer un peu, regarder vers l'avenir, tirer des plans, ce genre de chose. Le passé ne revient pas et l'avenir n'est pas encore là, seul le moment présent importe. Shit, je l'ai-tu entendue à toutes les sauces, celle-là. Aujourd'hui est le premier jour du reste de votre vie! Ben oui! Pis hier est le jour d'avant le premier jour du reste de votre vie et demain est le jour qui vient après le premier jour du reste de votre vie. Gimme a break, simonac! Bon, inutile de s'énerver, on parle pour parler. C'est pour ça qu'on fume sur un rocher en regardant le fleuve. C'est fait pour ça, le fleuve: regarder au loin en fumant la pipe comme un vieux pêcheur de morue brodé au point de croix."

5) "C'est des affaires ben simples. Les petites joies de la vie sont autour de nous, pas à Disneyland. Le bonheur, c'est pas spectaculaire."

1) "Art was born around 25,000 years ago, when the subhuman Neanderthal evolved into our human ancestor, Cro-Magnon man. With greater intelligence came imagination and the ability to create images in both painting and sculpture." [yeesh.]

2) "For Western civilization the nineteenth century was an age of upheaval. The church lost its grip, monarchies toppled, and new democracies suffered growing pains. In short, tradition lost its luster and the future was up for grabs. Unfamiliar forces like industrialization and urbanization made cities bulge with masses of dissatisfied poor. The fast pace of scientific progress and the ills of unrestrained capitalism caused more confusion."

3) "American midwestern architect Louis Sullivan's credo of 'form follows function' became the rallying cry of the day. The new designs were to express a building's commercial purpose, without any overlay of historical ornament. It was somehow fitting that the first new school of architecture to emerge in centuries was born in Chicago, 'Stormy, husky, brawling, /City of the Big Shoulders,' as poet Carl Sandburg would later call it. Chicago was a city without a past, a city of new immigrants that seemed to be making itself up as it went along."

1) "I have three great loves in life: Roberta, computers and boats. That said, this is not a book about any of those things, although the first two of those are important to the story."

2) "If you want to win in life, find something to sell, and sell it. Learn to accept and even cherish rejection. [...] The newspaper had never seen anyone like me. I was a selling machine. I loved selling, and I especially loved making money. I claimed every sales award and couldn't stop selling."

3) "Did I mention that I know how to sell? Being a starving seventeen-year-old, our first date was not particularly amazing. We went to a local Mexican restaurant and talked for hours. A couple weeks and a handful of dates later, I informed Roberta that we were to be married. She thought I was insane or joking, but that's only because she didn't know me. That was about to change. Her dad became my strongest ally, and saw in me a chance to rescue his errant daughter. He pushed Roberta from his end, and threw roadblocks in the way of other suitors. It took a few dates to sell Roberta on the idea of marriage but closing a sale is what I do best."

4) "We needed to form a real corporation for her to buy part of, transfer ownership of all the games into the corporation, and then sell her some stock. With the help of lawyers she referred us to, all of that was quickly accomplished. Unfortunately, during this process I discovered that there was already a large company that had our company name, 'On-Line Systems.' I was very proud of my background dealing with networks and knew, even at the time, that networking would someday be key to Sierra's future. I wanted to keep the 'on-line' part of the business name. Renaming the company did not require a lot of creativity. We were located near Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains, near the famous landmark Half Dome. So, overnight we became Sierra On-Line, with Half Dome as our logo."

5) "Instead of just doing a revved up version of Wizard and Princess, Roberta had started a new game, to be called King's Quest. IBM was giving us upfront money, as royalty advances, to help fund the development of the game. In hopes of bringing back some of the laid off employees, I flew to IBM and pitched them on additional games, and even a word processor! During that meeting I showed them the progress we were making on King's Quest and they were blown away."

6) "We overworked our developers, and this resulted in union organizing. This was a low point for morale around the company. I was personally devastated. From my perspective, I was doing whatever it took to provide jobs and grow the company. However, the employees felt the company was abusing them. In fact, both sides were correct."

7) "As Sierra would rise and fall over the years there would be employees who were laid off, or just didn't make the cut. DJ, our older son, was bullied in school by the children of former Sierra employees who had a grudge against Sierra. One parent, an ex-Sierra employee, even slugged DJ. Question: What adult slugs an elementary school kid? The answer, 'Someone with a grudge against their employer.' It was a company town, with all the good and bad that goes with it."

8) "One day toward the end of 1996, I received an email. In it, Gabe Newell said he had an early build of a game ready for presentation. Sierra had no interest in publishing games that we hadn't developed internally, but given the circumstances, I took the meeting. I figured that, in the worst case, I'd get the inside scoop on how they were able to obtain rights to the Quake engine. In November, Sierra and Valve had set a meeting, which ended up happening during a rare Washington snowstorm. I do not recall many details from the meeting itself, except that within half an hour of Valve's presentation of their game, called Half-Life, I made my pitch and offered to publish their game."

9) "Walter Forbes and his management team had lied to Sierra and were destroying the company we had spent seventeen years of our lives building. At that point, all Roberta and I wanted was to get away from CUC. I tried to put the best possible face on the disaster, but there was no denying that the merger was a total mess. That said, I remained convinced that Walter and his team were smart business people and that the software business would recover. Perhaps without the Davidsons and myself the company would shift to focusing on product and stop being sidetracked by anything to do with the former leaders. Roberta was even more upset than I was and insisted that we sell our stock along with my resignation. We talked about selling stock over a long period of time, but there had been a stock market crash in Asia and it rattled us. We decided to just blow out our CUC stock all at once. That decision would turn out to have been a very lucky one."

10) "This book is full of my opinions. I absolutely guarantee you that some of my opinions in this book are bad ideas. The problem is that I don't know which ones."