"What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn't have that smell."

“How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand.”

“Lunatics are writers whose works write them.”

“Diplomacy… mops up war’s spillages; legitimizes its outcomes; gives the strong state the means to impose its will on a weaker one, while saving its fleets and battalions for weightier opponents.”

“The body is the outermost layer of the mind.”

“Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.”

“The most malicious god is the god of the counted chicken.”