Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex

If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it.

A babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain.

Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you.

All gods are one god.