The problem isn't who is in charge. It's what is in charge. The problem is that people are encouraged to function as machines. Or, actually, as mechanisms. Human emotion and sympathy are unprofessional. They are inappropriate to the exercise of reason. Everything which makes people good - makes them human - is ruled out. The system doesn't care about people, but we treat it as if it were one of us, as if it were the sum of our goods and not the product of our least admirable compromises.

Ninjas are silly. They are the flower fairies of gong fu and karate.

Never mind, never mind, let's get to the part where we smite the unrighteous. I've brought my most alarming teeth!

A woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that.

Children, bored and opinionated, are scholars of the most dogmatic stripe.

I love you forever. I am sorry I cannot love you now.

In a lot of places, of course, the '80s had never really come to an end.