Mobs have passions, not brains.

We are not the only avatars of humanity. Once our computing machines achieved self-consciousness, they became part of this design.

Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed

Power: a currency that never went out of style.

There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io. Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better. Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend.