That was always the dream, wasn't it? 'I wish I'd known then what I know now'? But when you got older you found out that you NOW wasn't YOU then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

In the end the problem isn't that you have the wrong sort of government for the People, but that you have the wrong sort of People.

Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

He said it was better to belong where you don't belong than not to belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there.

The price of being the best is having to be the best.