“We say we exchange words when we meet. What we exchange is souls.”

“We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible to us.”

“Kate short-circuits my brain. In my head we always have these clear coherent exchanges, but once we meet, what comes out it is, “Kate, do what I say or I’ll kill you.” Her default reply is, “Fuck you!” and we go downhill from there.”

“The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.”

“We thanked each other. It was customary after every exchange. Our thanks were never disingenuous or ironic. We said thanks for getting this done so quickly, thanks for putting in so much effort. We had a meeting and when a meeting was over, we said thank you to the meeting makers for having made the meeting. Very rarely did we say anything negative or derogatory about meetings. We all knew there was a good deal of pointlessness to nearly all the meetings and in fact one meeting out of every three or four was nearly perfectly without gain or purpose but many meetings revealed the one thing that was necessary and so we attended them and afterward we thanked each other.”

“I can say no at any time ” “Yes.” “But aren’t I supposed to do whatever you say ” “Only if you want to. That’s what makes the power exchange of D s so potent. It’s a free exchange one that is meant to give us both what we need.”