“aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.”

“What good I thought I could do, all alone, against thousands of years of mistrust and the power of a Demonlord, I cannot now imagine: but such are the dreams of youth, too gloriously stupid to realise what cannot be done. And without those dreams, how should we ever accomplish the impossible?”

“The Song of the Winged Ones is a song of celebration, written as though the singer were standing on the Dragon Isle watching the dragons flying in the sun. The words are full of wonder at the beauty of the creatures; and there is a curious pause in the middle of one of the stanzas near the end, where the singer waits a full four measures in silence for those who listen to hear the music of distant dragon wings. It seldom fails to bring echoes of something beyond the silence, and is almost never performed because many bards fear it.I love it.”

“Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended.”

“They were sitting in their nice apartments or dorm rooms reading the latest Haruki Murakami story while I was sitting in a shitty little ramshackle house reading a used copy of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre. They weren't bad people. They all did volunteer work, voted Democrat and believed in the goodness of humanity. I voted Democrat, needed Habitat for Humanity to come to my house and knew from personal experience the shittiness of humanity because I was shitty myself.”

“I'm sorry," I said, "did you just say elections are about hope?”

“A guy is on the radio talking about the war.Speculating.Speculating.Speculating.He says in less than two hours, we shall fight to preserve freedom.Freedom.America wants to give another country freedom.That doesn't sound that bad, or does it.”