“To both my parents, the world is a battle for attention, a war to be heard.”

“Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”

“I'd always welcomed war, but in battle, my passion rose unbidden.”

“Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.”

“There is no morality in war', they said, 'but cannibals never killed more in one day that they could eat. In your wars, thousands are killed in a few minutes. Perhaps it might be worth suggesting to you leaders that both parties in your war agree to five minutes of combat. Then let all the parents come to the battlefield and collect the pieces and parts of their children, take them home and mourn and bury them. After that is over, another five minutes of battle might or might not be agreed upon. It is difficult to make sense out of senselessness.”

“Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry... makes people compete for the attention.”