Does it depress you? To know just how alone you really are?
Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
The most effective way to silence our guilty conscience is to convince ourselves and others that those we have sinned against are indeed depraved creatures, deserving every punishment, even extermination. We cannot pity those we have wronged, nor can we be indifferent toward them. We must hate and persecute them or else leave the door open to self-contempt.
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.
It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt.
Power and wealth are not two of my main stakes.
There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don't usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.
You want to know how Egyptians pulled the brains out of mummies. or built the pyramids, or cursed King Tut's tomb? My dad's your man.
Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.