I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

Isn’t that what it means to be civilized? That you can wait to get what you want?

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

The selective voluntary blindness of human beings allows them to ignore the moral consequences of their choices. It has been one of the species' most valuable traits, in terms of the survival of any particular human community.

Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.