People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.

You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.

There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.

It's still magic even if you know how it's done.

But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.

If you have let pride get the better of you, then you have already lost, but if you grab pride by the scruff of the neck and ride it like a stallion, then you may have already won.

All the higher life forms scythed away, just like that. [ . . . ] Nothing but dust and fundamentalists.