“It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.”

“Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.”

“Enormous cemeteries existed among sedentary civilizations, where the weight of the past grew larger than any present time.”

“Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.”

“Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.”

“He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.”

“Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.”