Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.

And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.

We see everything from the narrator's point of view, so exposition about the world is limited to what impinges directly on him and the story he's telling. Considering how old the world is, we learn very little about its history, which I think is a good thing.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle, what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― Xerox it, and embed it in the fertile line of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.

Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.