All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived.

But lies were what people wanted; that was politics.

Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.

History is a wave that moves through time slightly faster than we do.

The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128

Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.

And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them.