Can a country's people be better than its planes?

Winter hurled more wind and rain at the city than it ever had before. Clouds dashed about in all directions emptying their thunder, hail and rain. The horizon was choked in fog.

The days were heavy and sticky. All identical, one the same as the other. Soon they would even get rid of their one remaining distinction, the shell of their names: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday.

The writer is always to some extent in exile, wherever he is, because he is somehow outside, separated from others; there is always a distance.

I had three choices: to conform to my own beliefs, which meant death; complete silence, which meant another kind of death; to pay a tribute, a bribe. I chose the third solution by writing The Long Winter.

Can one move an empire as if it were a house?

Can a country's people be better than its planes?