I wanted to do a collection where the narrator is constant throughout, so that there's a little unity.
Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.
. . . . to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.
I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity.
Fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple, it had also scorched the life from a city, this night, and spewed its venom over the land. How strange of God to speak from a burning bush, and of Man to make a symbol of Heaven into a symbol of Hell.
Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.
But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
Last time I called shotgun we had rented a limo, so I messed up!
Joy, grief, desire or fear, whate'er the name The passion bears, its influence is the same; Where things exceed your hope or fall below, You stare, look blank, grow numb from top to toe.
What will come, will come; you just have to be there to meet it.
[Australian Reserve Bank] Governor MacFarlane said recently when Paul Volcker broke the back of American inflation it's regarded as the policy triumph of the Western world. When I broke the back of Australian inflation they say, "Oh, you're the fellow that put the interest rates up. " Am I not the same fellow that gave them the 15 years of good growth and high wealth that came from it?