What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the secrets of fate if you can't blow something up?

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are.

Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abscesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say "yes."

It was amazing how many friends you could make by being bad at things, provided you were bad enough to be funny.

Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.